Former CIA Officer & Torture Program Whistleblower | John Kiriakou

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer who worked as both an analyst and operations officer, serving on the Iraq portfolio, in Greece, and in Pakistan, where he helped lead the capture of Abu Zubaydah. He later became a prominent whistleblower on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, served time in federal prison, and has since worked as an author, commentator, and lecturer. VAER Watches ⬇️ https://www.vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse get a free watch roll with your purchase. 20% off for active duty, veteran, leo, & first responders For ad free episdoes subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse 00:00 – Start 01:01 – John Kiriakou’s Upbringing & Greek-American Family 06:29 – Studying Middle Eastern Affairs & an Early Interest in Espionage 09:15 – The CIA Officer Posing as His College Professor 12:29 – Joining the CIA as an Analyst 14:53 – Briefing President George H. W. Bush During the Gulf War 16:58 – Working the Gulf War From CIA Headquarters 20:06 – Life After the Gulf War & Getting Burned Out on Iraq 22:30 – Writing a National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam Hussein 22:53 – Deciding to Leave Analysis for Operations 25:06 – Going Through CIA Operational Training 28:37 – Weapons, Explosives & Recruiting Spies 29:45 – Arriving in Athens as a CIA Case Officer 33:46 – Walk-Ins, Probes & Embassy Security 37:52 – CIA Disguises & Fooling the U. S. Ambassador 42:40 – The Terrorist Group 17 November 45:12 – The Assassination of British Defense Attaché Stephen Saunders 48:38 – 17 November Names Kiriakou in Its Manifesto 51:26 – Who Was Really Behind 17 November? 55:09 – How the Group Was Finally Unmasked 1:01:24 – Interrogating Carlos the Jackal 1:03:32 – 9/11 Changes Everything 1:04:44 – Watching the Second Plane Hit From CIA Headquarters 1:07:41 – Volunteering for the War on Terror 1:08:34 – Pakistan After 9/11: “The Wild West” 1:11:38 – Pakistan, the Taliban & the War Next Door 1:14:02 – The Two Faces of Pakistani Intelligence 1:15:51 – Capturing Abu Zubaydah 1:16:42 – Inside the CIA’s Torture Program 1:18:09 – Why Kiriakou Refused Torture Training 1:18:43 – Going Public About CIA Torture 1:21:17 – John Brennan Reopens the Case Against Him 1:21:40 – Charged Under the Espionage Act 1:22:34 – Facing 45 Years & Taking the Plea Deal 1:23:08 – Why John Brennan Wanted Him Prosecuted 1:23:32 – Obama’s Crackdown on National Security Leaks 1:25:57 – Heading to Federal Prison 1:26:24 – The Prison Assignment That Wasn’t What the Judge Ordered 1:29:21 – Learning How to Survive Federal Prison 1:31:30 – Becoming the Prisonhouse Appeal Writer 1:32:36 – Race, Gangs & the Social Structure of Prison 1:36:47 – How the Mafia Ran Prison Rackets 1:43:10 – Using CIA Tradecraft Behind Bars 1:46:18 – A Prisoner Puts a Contract on Kiriakou 1:48:19 – Getting Out of Prison & Starting Over 1:50:05 – Anger at the System & the People Who Were Never Prosecuted 1:53:13 – Where Is the Line Between Interrogation & Torture? 1:57:26 – Waterboarding, War Crimes & the Torture Debate 1:59:11 – Why Did the U. S. Invade Iraq? 2:02:03 – The WMD Intelligence Fight Inside Washington 2:04:00 – Did Overthrowing Saddam Hand Iraq to Iran? 2:05:45 – Why Kiriakou Went to Work for Sputnik 2:06:48 – Criticizing Russia While Working for Russian Media 2:12:50 – Life After Sputnik & What He’s Doing Now 2:15:43 – CIA Declassified & Digging Through Old Intelligence Files 2:18:16 – MKUltra & CIA History 2:18:25 – Audience Questions 2:29:47 – Would He Blow the Whistle Again? 2:42:48 – Public Trust, the CIA & Government Accountability 2:51:38 – Why John Brennan Avoided More Scrutiny 3:01:22 – Would a Presidential Pardon Restore His Pension? 3:02:18 – How Close Trump Came to Pardoning Him 3:04:52 – Thoughts on Trump Returning to Office 3:06:23 – How American Politics Has Flipped 3:07:36 – Final Thoughts Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 0:51Jack Murphy?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 309 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. And our guest on tonight's show is retired CIA Officer John Kiriyaku. He spent time in the agency, working the Iraq desk, working in Greece. And then, you know, had some, some legal problems that we'll talk about in a little bit. And we're excited to have him here on the show and really talk about all of this and maybe get a different perspective on some of these topics than what we usually hear. Welcome to the show. Appreciate you joining us on a Friday evening. Let's, let's jump right into it, man. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing, how you grew up and what the, what your path was towards federal service.

• 1:35Speaker 03

  Right. I grew up in, in Western Pennsylvania, in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour north of Pittsburgh in Amish country. And my mom and dad were both elementary educators. My dad was a principal, my mom, a teacher. And, um, you know, in a, in a little community like that, that, that is also very ethnic, heavily Italian, Greek. Church was a big deal because not just for religious reasons, of course, but, but also for cultural reasons. And so we went to Greek school. We spoke Greek at home. My grandparents, all four of my grandparents lived within, you know, 30 minutes drive.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  And so, uh, you know, it was kind of an idyllic upbringing. But with that said, I was always interested in espionage. I don't know why. When I was nine, my folks gave me a set of walkie talkies for, uh, for Christmas and I was hooked. And more importantly, and more seriously, because, because I was

• 2:47Speaker 03

  part of an immigrant family, all four of my grandparents having come from the Greek island of Rhodes.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Public service was, was always critically important because my grandparents instilled in all of us this idea that, that we really should be so grateful for what the United States had give, had given them, that we should seek to pay it back. And so, you know, I went to, uh, I left Newcastle when I, the week after I turned 18, I went to, uh, school in Washington at George Washington University, got a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and an MA in Legislative Affairs. And, uh, and only looked for openings in public service.

• 3:30Jack Murphy?

  Just out of curiosity, John, did your, uh, folks have any history in Greece with, you know, World War II and all the activities that went on there back in the day?

• 3:40Speaker 03

  No, that's a good question. The, the quick answer is no. Because, because the Greek economy and the stability of the Greek state were both so perilous between 1920 and 1930. There was this active Greek government policy where they were encouraging young men to leave. They couldn't feed them. They couldn't employ them. The idea was just tell them, get out, get out of the, go to the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, just get out. And so, um, my grandparents did. They left in between the two wars. So they were, they were a little too young to fight in World War I

• 4:23Speaker 03

  and they were too old to fight in World War II. They just hit that sweet spot and they were able to, to immigrate. But let's see, my, my dad's parents were 20 when my grandfather came and my grandmother was 24 when she came. And on my mom's side, my grandparents were like 22 and 18 when they came.

• 4:47Jack Murphy?

  And you must've been raised on some of those stories about, you know, being an immigrant is difficult. I mean, there's no getting around it.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  No, there's no getting around it. And, you know, my, my dad's father, growing up, my dad's father was like my best friend, right? He's been dead since 1978 and not a single day goes by that I don't think about him. In fact, today is his death anniversary, November 15th, 1978. And, you know, he would sit me down and show me his tattoo. And it was a tattoo of a big eagle and it, in its talons, it had an American flag and a Greek flag. And he would make me promise never to get a tattoo because he got one and he got, he got hepatitis. And he was one of 18 children. And talk about not being able to, you know, feed your family or clothe them.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  He left school in the third grade or the Greek equivalent of the third grade while it was still under Ottoman occupation and, um, and really never looked back. He, he left in 1920, went to Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania to work in the mill, saved his money for 10 years, went back, bought some property, married my grandmother, changed his mind, got right back on the boat and, uh, and returned to Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, 1930, and never returned to Greece.

• 6:11Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  And so, yeah, I mean, he was proud to say that America was his country now and there was no reason to go back, not even to see any of his remaining siblings.

• 6:22Jack Murphy?

  It's so wild. I mean, it's literally a different world.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it really is. Can you imagine spending four weeks on a ship by yourself?

• 6:31Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  At 19 years old in the beginning, not speaking a word of the language and knowing you're probably never going to see your parents ever again.

• 6:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  It's rough.

• 6:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And so you went to, uh, you say George Washington University, majored in Middle, Middle Eastern Studies. And, uh, what, uh, you know, you said you had an early interest in espionage.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Right. I was in grad school and I was, I was working a bunch of different jobs at the time to put, and I was, I was working a bunch of different jobs at the time to put myself through grad school. I, I worked, uh, I worked on campus as an RA in one of the dorms. And then I worked at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union on K Street, the international headquarters. And so I was taking this class called, uh, the Psychology of Leadership. And it was taught by an eminent psychiatrist by the name of Gerald Post, Dr. Jerry Post, who, until he died, was on TV all the time. He was in dozens of, of documentaries.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  He wrote more than a dozen books and was really one of the country's acknowledged experts on long-distance psychological evaluations. So he gave us this, uh, this assignment for class where we had to shadow our bosses for a week and then write a psychological profile of our bosses. And I worked at the union for a, an old school union organizer, mean, tough, kind of a scary guy. He had actually had his back broken during a strike. Scabs beat him and they broke his back. He was just a mean son of a gun. And I was shadowing him for this, this week.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  And, uh, and we got into an argument halfway through the week and I called him a racist, which he was. And, um, he got so angry, he, his face got red and he balled up his fists. And, and I remember putting my hands up like, oh, like I went too far this time. And he says to me, my penis is bigger than yours. And I said, what?

• 8:47Speaker 03

  And he goes, my penis is bigger than yours. And I said, you know what? You're nuts. And I quit and I walked out. I went back to the dorm.

• 8:56Jack Murphy?

  You didn't, you didn't compare to see who was really bigger?

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, right? Unbelievable, this guy.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  I actually Googled him recently. He's still around. He lives in New York. I hope he's, I hope he's watching.

• 9:10Jack Murphy?

  Good for him.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  Because I remember what he said. Yeah. So, uh, so I went back. I wrote my paper and I said, I believed he was a sociopath with, with violent and possibly psychopathic tendencies. And I sent the paper in and a week later I got it back and I got an A and professor, Post wrote in the margin, please see me after class. So, um, I went up to him after class and, and he said, come down to my office. And so I went down to his office. He closed the door and he says, look, I'm not really a professor here. I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  And I'm looking for people who would fit into the CIA's culture. I think you would fit into the CIA's culture. Would you like to join the CIA?

• 10:00Speaker 03

  And the truth was, I, I kinda always wanted to join the CIA, but I was getting married in six weeks. Uh, I just didn't have a job.

• 10:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  And said, so I said, yeah, sure. Yeah. I'd like to join the CIA.

• 10:13Jack Murphy?

  That, that's a really.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  You know, it was a whole process.

• 10:16Jack Murphy?

  That's just, I just want to interrupt for a moment, just to point out that like, that's a very interesting way that you were recruited. I don't think the agency would recruit like that today. Where they have somebody who's spotting, spotting, spotting and assessing, right?

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's a felony now, actually, since, since Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in 1993. They can't do that anymore. It's far, far less sexy, but you have to go to www.cia.gov and click apply.

• 10:47Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. It's a better story to get called into the basement of your professor. Yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  Do you think that that, uh, helped the, the, the change in the rules of how they're able to recruit hurts or helps the agency or both?

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Oh, it helps. Most definitely. It helps because when I joined, you know, it, it was just a, a giant gaggle of, of white guys. That was it. I mean, you know, it wasn't until 93 that they said, you know, we don't have any women or minorities working here. We should probably do something about that. But otherwise it was just the old boy network, you know, and a bunch of, a bunch of eggheads from the Ivy League that were running the place.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  So it, it, EEOC, uh, Equal Employment Opportunity Act, uh, made the agency a better place.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  But, but with less cool stories about how people got recruited.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly right. See, now they do it. They do it in this odd unofficial way. So they set up this program called the Scholar in Residence Program. If you're, if you're like two, three, four years away from retirement, they'll send you back to your alma mater at full salary to, you know, teach classes like a friend of mine went back to Indiana University and taught a class called Espionage and Russian Literature, for example, and it's all BS, but what they do is, you know, look for people who might fit into the CIA, CIA culture and say,

• 12:21Speaker 03

  hey, I think you really, really ought to apply. So that's how they do it. It's kind of the same thing.

• 12:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it. Um, so from that point, I mean, you're, you're getting married. You have a line on a, on a job, on an actual, hey, a pensioned federal job, which I'm sure may, would have made your parents very happy.

• 12:44Jack Murphy?

  What, what was the next step for you going through that recruitment and then presumably at the farm going, or you started off as an analyst, right?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  I started off as an analyst. Yeah. Um, so it was, it was a while. I mean, I did the analytic training at the farm, of course, but that's just sort of sitting at a desk all day long, but,

• 13:03Speaker 03

  the, the, the process, the hiring process was onerous. It took about, uh, I had a lot of relatives still in Greece. In fact, one stupid cousin, he was a member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of Greece, and that set me back months.

• 13:20Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I bet, yeah.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. It, it took about 18 months before I finally, well, not 18, it took about 16 months before I finally got hired. But, you know, you have to go through the polygraph and the background investigation and a ton of tests and, and they take your hair and your piss and your blood and it's, it's very invasive and very time consuming, but I, I ended up passing everything. Um, got hired into Dr. Post's, uh, an office that Dr. Post had created, uh, called the Office of Leadership Analysis and, um,

• 13:59Speaker 03

  and, uh, started off as the, uh, as the analyst, the leadership analyst for Iraq. I was, um, I was Saddam Hussein's intelligence community biographer. And then I worked with the psychologists and the psychiatrists to, to write psychological profiles of, of Saddam and his sons and, and the members of his cabinet and military leadership.

• 14:22Jack Murphy?

  What, what year was this?

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Pretty darn nicely because I'll tell you what, I, I actually, I actually complained, um, about the, the job because, you know, we would go days at a time with not a single cable coming in and I'm just sitting there twiddling my thumbs. And my boss said to me, you know, don't lose hope. Iraq has had the same cabinet, the same leadership since 1968. But if you, if you work hard and you learn the writing style, you can transfer onto something more interesting like Romania, he said.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  So just as I got to the point where I felt like I knew it as quickly as I could, I, I ran into the office and my boss was there and he said, um, don't take off your jacket. Uh, we're, we're going to the White House. And so I had only been to the White House as a tourist, right? So we go to the White House. Um, we're escorted into the Oval Office and it was the president, the vice president, the national security advisor, the director of the CIA, my boss and me. And I remember sitting on the couch and thinking, my buddies from high school would not believe in a million years that this was happening.

• 15:43Jack Murphy?

  It's funny that you were, you were in this.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  Hold on guys, real quick. I'm so sorry, but our stream seems to be frozen right now. We are not.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  It keeps cutting in and out.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  It's been out for a minute now.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  No, it's back up, but.

• 15:54Jack Murphy?

  Is it?

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Okay. I apologize.

• 15:58Jack Murphy?

  I, I, I just, I was gonna say, it's interesting that you were in this like, in your mind at least, an obscure office somewhere in the agency. And suddenly you have this, this meteoric rise as it becomes so relevant that you're in the Oval Office.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Oh my God. And I had just written this paper. I probably shouldn't say the guy's name that I, that I wrote the paper about. But the night of the invasion, the Iraqi government released a, a press release saying that this guy was going to be the new governor of occupied Kuwait. It turned out to not be true. They were sort of hoping they could bully him into it. But I had just published this paper a few days before. And so, um, so I went to the White House with the paper in hand. And, um, the president looked at it. It was George H. W. Bush at the time. He's looking at the paper.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  And then he tosses it onto the coffee table and he says, great. So now what do we do? And then everybody turned and looked at me. I was 20, I was 25 years old at the time. I didn't know what to do, but you know, I did the best I could and, and it, it, it made the first half of my career. It was, it was ridiculous.

• 17:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And, and what was kind of your, your role, um, through the, through the Gulf War? Cause it sounds like you, um, analytical side, you became kind of like one of the go-to guys.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was very fortunate. I spent the first, uh, several weeks on the, um, the task force, the, the analytic task force that was up in the CIA Operations Center. And then I was sent to Saudi Arabia to be one of the liaison officers with the Kuwaiti royal family. They were exiled in the, uh, Saudi city of Taif, uh, just outside of, uh, of Mecca. And so I went there and then I would report back like, like I remember reporting back, I think the Emir is, is cracking up. All he does is tend his roses and cry. And so then the president would pick up the phone and call the Emir and say, don't worry, we're, we're going to liberate Kuwait. You're going to be the Emir again. And

• 18:11Speaker 03

  it was, it was all very exciting, very heady stuff.

• 18:14Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  You know, it was a couple of the guys, a couple of the old timers told me, you know, appreciate this because this is never going to happen again in your career.

• 18:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  And, um, they were wrong, but it was, you know, one of those twice in a career.

• 18:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Kind of events.

• 18:31Jack Murphy?

  Uh, no, I mean, that's, that's fascinating. They see all that unfold and to kind of have like a front seat, uh, view for it.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Crazy. I remember we would get these cables that were marked critic, C R I T I C critic. It's the highest level of of emergency. Yeah, it's it's a it's a crisis. So it's like routine. Geez, I forget now. I forget what the next one up from routine was then. Oh, routine priority, immediate, flash, and then critic. Critic means they're coming over the walls, right? So we would get these critic cables from NSA. And it would say scud missile has been detected as as being launched from such and such coordinates. And real quickly, I'd look at my Iraq map.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  And if it was launched from Western Iraq, that meant it was going to Israel. And if it was launched from Southern Iraq, it would be going to Saudi Arabia. So I'd say scud launch and everybody would jump up and and we had, you know, one TV on a TV stand back then. And CNN, we'd put CNN on and we would wait. And it was like, you know, 10 minutes later, they'd say, breaking news. There's a scud missile coming to Jerusalem or whatever. So it was all very exciting. And you know, then then you get these calls. Can you come up to the director's conference room? We need you to brief the, you know, the Prime Minister of Belgium or or the the King of Lesotho. I I briefed the King of like

• 20:08Jack Murphy?

  Lesotho?

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Tahiti once.

• 20:10Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, it's it's crazy. And then, you know, you go do the briefing and then you go back and sit at your computer and eat a tuna fish sandwich and just start writing again.

• 20:20Jack Murphy?

  And after the after the Gulf War in this this sort of timeframe here, was there something that came after? Or or was this when you started thinking about the Directorate of Operations?

• 20:32Speaker 03

  Well, I got I got very bored. Well, you let me back up. Near the end of the of the Gulf War, people were telling me, look, you know, this is this is the point where you move on to your next assignment, right? You can basically do whatever you want. And and so choose wisely. And I wanted to go overseas. So I did a rotation. I applied for and was granted a rotation to the State Department. And I went to Bahrain, a little tiny country in the Persian Gulf. And I spent two years there as the Economic Officer in the American Embassy, unfortunately, doing Iraq sanctions issues. So I've had it, you know, up to here with Iraq. I got back in 96. And then they put me back on Iraq again.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  And then finally, in late 97, the National Intelligence Officers, the highest ranking intelligence analyst in the intelligence community, came to me and said, I want you to write a national intelligence estimate. Now, everybody wants to write an NIE because that's how you get the big promotion to the more senior levels. And I said, OK, what do you want me to write about? And he said, I want it to be called Iraq, Poland, Saddam's next 12 months. So I wrote it. And I said three things. I made three analytic conclusions. I said Saddam could threaten the Kurds, he could threaten the Shia, he could threaten Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And I sent it in.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Now, in these coordination sessions, members of all 18 intelligence agencies in the American government come. And then what you do is you all sit around and you say, or the National Intelligence Officer says, OK, first sentence, and he reads the first sentence. Does anybody object? And of course, everybody objects because they were the ones that wanted to write the paper in the first place. So then you have to hash out acceptable language for everybody for the first sentence. Then you go to the second sentence. And usually this takes weeks to get through an national intelligence estimate. So we coordinated mine in four hours.

• 22:44Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  And the National Intelligence Officer, the NIO, came to me afterwards. And he said, that was the fastest coordination session I have ever gone through. And I said, Ben, I'm ashamed of this paper. All we needed to do was take last year's NIE and just change the date. There's no new analysis in this paper.

• 23:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  So I I decided during that experience, I got to get out of here. I want to do something interesting, important, instead of just sitting in a cubicle and thinking the big thoughts all day long. And so a job opened up in Athens. And interestingly enough, it said they were looking for an officer. It was a counterterrorism job handled by the Counterterrorism Center. And they were looking for an officer who spoke either Greek or Arabic. And as it turned out, I was the only person in the entire CIA who spoke both Greek and Arabic. So I went down to CTC, the Counterterrorism Center.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  And I found the hiring officer, who was a senior former station chief. And I said, I'd love to apply for this job, but I'll be honest with you. I don't have any operational experience at all. But I'm fluent in both Greek and Arabic. And he said, are you kidding me? And I said, no. He said, are you willing to be tested? I said, I just tested a couple of weeks ago, but if you want me to test again, I will. It turned out that his secretary was Greek. So she came out, started speaking to me in Greek. I answered her in Greek, and she says, he gets the thumbs up from me. And my Arabic tests were very fresh. And he said, look, it's going to take some convincing because,

• 24:30Speaker 03

  you know, we we kind of wanted a seasoned ops guy. But it's a lot easier and it's a lot cheaper for me to take a linguist and teach him operations than it is to take an operations officer and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic.

• 24:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  And so I got the job and I went to Athens.

• 24:45Jack Murphy?

  How how common or uncommon is it for somebody to go from analysis to operations?

• 24:53Speaker 03

  It was very, very unusual. There's something called a, well, you know what, I won't say what it's called. But anyway, there's this, there's this committee, this process that you have to go that you have to go through to move from one director to another. And to go from analysis to ops was highly unusual pre 9/11. It's it's more common now. But I had to get permissions like all the way up to the Deputy Director for Operations to make that. And it worked out for me. I had a knack for recruiting people, as it turned out.

• 25:26Jack Murphy?

  Did you have to go back to the farm and go through like the the human training?

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that's when I went back to the farm for the operational training. And you know, if you if you're like hired out of grad school or whatever, and you go straight into ops, you're going to do a pretty good, solid 18 months at the farm. But I didn't need all those, well, what they call CIA 101 assignments. You know, they'll they'll put you six months on the Iran desk and six months on the nuclear desk and six weeks, rather, six weeks, six weeks, six weeks on Russia. I didn't need to do that because I I was already mid-career and I I knew how the agency worked. So I went straight into the ops training. And funny thing, you know, the first, the first phase of that training, which lasted, I don't know, four months, I guess.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  The first phase was weapons training. And it was about a dozen of us. And I go down to the farm and

• 26:25Speaker 03

  the instructor says in the very first session, who here doesn't own a gun? And I I raised my hand. I happened to be sitting in the front row. I raised my hand and I turned around to look. And it turned out I was the only person with my hand.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  And he says, you don't own a gun? And I said, well, truth be told, I've never actually touched a real gun. And he's like, oh, for God's sake. All right. All right, we're going to start from the very beginning. And so he pulled me aside. Everybody else got their guns. I got in a bright orange, you know, rubber gun. And I had that for the first couple of days, and then they gave me my real gun. And at the end of the class, I ended up testing first in accuracy. I had a knack for it to the point where one of my instructors recommended that I check out competitive shooting, which I I did with a beautiful.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  There's nothing like a pump action 12 gauge in your hand. And it's just so satisfying. In fact, the instructor said, why is the pump action 12 gauge the best gun? And, you know, one guy raised his hands. He says, well, because you can use different kinds of shot and depending on your target and blah, blah, blah. He says, correct. Why else? Some other guy says something else. Correct. Why else? Nobody had any answers. And he says, because it makes this bitchin' sound. He goes

• 27:55Speaker 03

  and I thought, yeah, that's why I like the 12.

• 27:58Jack Murphy?

  It's it's It's interesting you talk about that experience because you know, the the interesting thing about teaching marksmanship is that when people come to it without a lot of ego attachment, especially especially men tend to come to it like this is something I should know how to do as a man. And there's all this pressure you put on yourself. But when somebody, you you find this, you know, teaching women sometimes because they don't have that. They don't have that hang up. They just learn the technique. They just learn how to do. They just learn the fundamentals of marksmanship and are able to just go and do it. And I wonder if that's why you didn't do well or why you did do well on the testing.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  Well, I think I think you're probably right. I I didn't have any bad habits that that they needed to break.

• 28:44Jack Murphy?

  That's a that's a big part of it. Yeah. Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  And then after that, I'm sorry to interrupt.

• 28:52Jack Murphy?

  No, no, no, go ahead, please.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  We we had things like, we had a bomb making class at a at a separate facility farther south. And, you know, you start off with a Molotov cocktail. And at the end of the week, the final exam is you have to build a bomb of the one of the designs that they taught you during the week, and then you have to blow up a car. And, you know, that's just fun. Who wouldn't want to try something like that for a week? And then it was counterterrorism driving and then advanced counterterrorism driving, which was out in the the desert in Nevada. And and then you go into what they call the asset acquisition cycle, which is spot, assess, develop, recruit.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  You know, convincing people to commit espionage for you, or in some cases to commit treason for you. And and then it gets even more advanced from there. So it was it was fun. I mean, I never considered it to be work. It was great. You work crazy hours, but you're having such a good time that you don't even really consider it to be work.

• 29:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. And then you hit the ground in Athens. A counterterrorism position. Tell us what your job there and what what you were doing day to day.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so generically speaking, it was to recruit spies to steal secrets. Plain and simple, just like that.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  Specifically, though, it was it was deeper. There were two groups that were active in Greece at the time. One, the most dangerous, the most lethal, was Revolutionary Organization Seventeen November. The other was one called Popular Revolutionary Struggle. They both actively targeted Americans and Seventeen November had murdered not just the CIA station chief, but two defense attachés and an American technical sergeant. Some hapless, poor guy who was just doing his laundry one day and they just went in and executed him in the laundry room of his apartment building. So it was those two organizations, but because I spoke Arabic,

• 30:57Speaker 03

  I was also looking at, you know, Abu Nidal and the Libyans and the PFLP and the DFLP and whoever happened to be passing through Athens and Athens was a major crossroads for Arab terrorist groups. So it was it was very busy. My very first day, I had only been in the office for like an hour and we had what's called a walk-in, somebody who just literally walks into an American embassy and says, "I have information I want to pass to the CIA." Ninety-nine percent, that's not true, not ninety-nine percent, say ninety-six percent are lunatics, right?

• 31:41Speaker 03

  And then the rest are either what we call intelligence peddlers, where they'll have a little kernel of actual information that you might want. So they give it to you and you give them a hundred bucks or five hundred bucks or twenty bucks or whatever it is. And then they'll go to the British Embassy and then the French Embassy and the Russian Embassy. And then, you know, in some of these countries, that's a month's salary right there. So the others, besides the real McCoys, and they're fewer than one in a hundred, there are what are called probes. Probes frighten us the most because they come and say, "Oh, I have information I want to give to the CIA."

• 32:26Speaker 03

  In fact, they're there to look to see where the security cameras are,

• 32:31Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  whether the door is armored,

• 32:36Speaker 03

  how many of the guards are armed, who's wearing, you know, entry badges with photographs on them, whatever intelligence they can collect about the hard line on the outer perimeter and the second perimeter of the embassy, because they're actually working for the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, whomever, in case someday they decide they want to attack that embassy, they hope that they've identified a weak point.

• 33:10Speaker 01

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• 33:12Jack Murphy?

  What's going on?

• 33:14Speaker 01

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• 33:17Jack Murphy?

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• 34:00Jack Murphy?

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• 34:41Speaker 01

  I have the C4 Tactical Field Watch. It's solar powered, too. I'm loving it and it's funny because I had this laying on my coffee table the other day, actually, and my homie came in to watch football or whatever and he's a watch guy and he's like, "Oh, is that that Vera one?" I'm not even making this up, like, I'm not even bullshitting. I'm like, "Holy shit, yeah, like, they're gonna be presenting sponsor for the Team House." And they sent us all a bunch of watches, like, "Yo, I love this watch." And I literally sold the watch, I sent them the link, the Team House link, and I'm like, "Yo, buy a watch from this link." Because if you do buy a watch from that link, which is vera watches dot com slash the Team House,

• 35:21Speaker 01

  when you purchase a watch, you get a free watch roll that you could fill up with three watches. So you could travel with your watches and stuff like that. It's really cool, it's leather.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was so excited when he was like, "Yo, is that that Vera watch? I see it all the time." I was like so amped that he came up with that.

• 35:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's nice. I really like the, like, nice, big watch face.

• 35:45Speaker 01

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• 36:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, absolutely.

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• 36:46Speaker 04

  John, so my follow-up question is, because, you know, you talk about the physical security and the challenges to that, but also, agency officers are in alias or at least undercover when they're, right? When they're at an embassy. So if they have somebody go in and say, "I want to talk, I have information," and then an agency personnel meets them, they can basically, when somebody walks out of the embassy, what I basically say, "That's the person who I met with."

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a good point. So what you do in a case like that, well, what you do everywhere around the world is first you have a State Department security officer, a regional security officer, meet with this person and try to get a feel for whether or not, you know, they're the real deal or a probe or a nut or whatever. You also try to keep what's called the walk-in room outside of the embassy's hard line. So, you know, the larger embassies have, they might have a little 7-Eleven-type store on the grounds or they've got a little bar where everybody congregates after work or whatever. Put it out there with those things, put it out in the parking lot.

• 38:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  So they can't get through the hard line. Otherwise, if it is a CIA officer meeting with the walk-in, you almost always do it in disguise. And the disguises are so sophisticated that you look nothing like yourself and nobody can tell that it's a disguise.

• 38:23Jack Murphy?

  It's like the glasses with the nose and the mustache.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  I'll tell you what, you're right, exactly. I had a disguise that was a bald head with a comb over and the only seam was right here on the bridge of the nose. And I didn't wear glasses at the time, but they gave me a pair of glasses with just clear lenses. So you couldn't see that seam. And the comb over, they used real human hair, they matched it perfectly to the color of my skin. And I actually, when I got the disguise, the station chief said, "We gotta go see the ambassador." So we walked into the ambassador's office and the chief said, "Mr. Ambassador, I wanted to introduce you to one of our experts. He's just flown in from Washington."

• 39:09Speaker 03

  And the ambassador got up and said, "Oh, it's so nice to meet you, welcome to Greece." And I said, "Thank you." Now, mind you, I would see the ambassador like every single day, multiple times a day. And he says to me, "So what are you here to talk about?" And I said, "Well, I'm not sure." And I pulled the glasses down and I grabbed the seam and pulled the disguise off. And he was like, "Oh, my God." And I said, "It's good, right?"

• 39:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that's Mission Impossible moment.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  We had John Mendez on, she was a former chief of disguise, talking about it and how they worked with Hollywood. That's episode 270 for those of you who, like, it's a great episode, but it's fascinating, like, what they're able to do.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  You know, those guys, going back to the beginning of that, on the day that I was sworn in, right? You stand up, you put your right hand in the air, you swear to uphold the Constitution. There was a cartoonist on my left and a beautician on my right. And the cartoonist became a master forger and the beautician became a disguise expert.

• 40:25Jack Murphy?

  So cool.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  And so she was the one that made the bald head for me. I mean, these are people that didn't go to Harvard, they went to the Fairfax County School of Beauty.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  And the cartoonist was just a self-taught, you know, cartoonist. But you never know the expertise that people can bring to these positions. These disguised people were not just brilliant at their work, they were genuinely...

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Accomplished artists. I would consider this to be a form of art. They were so good at it.

• 41:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. John, the, something I'd love to ask you about that I, I think you would have a really unique perspective is about sort of like the history and what you walked into, what you were dealing with, with Greek terrorism, you know, terrorist organizations in Greece. Um, you know, as someone who is ethnically Greek, speaks the language, you're also a trained analyst and a case officer. I mean, really, like, when you drill down into it, what was 17 November? What was this threat that you were trying to counter?

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Man, I became obsessed with 17 November, and it wasn't just me. It was everybody who worked on the issue. So, the Greek government, the democratically elected Greek government was overthrown in 1967, and was replaced by a military dictatorship that lasted until 1974. The dictatorship collapsed on itself in 1974. Um, and then, the country, you know, became democratic again. It had a democratic election, the former president returned and was elected again, and, and they recreated parliament, and, you know, on paper, everybody lived happily

• 42:13Speaker 03

  ever after. But, but there was this, there was this opposition movement that formed among students in Paris in 1967, and it became more and more radical, to the point where it then broke up into different factions. One of those factions became a group called the One May Movement.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  One May, we believe, eventually morphed into 17 November. The other was one called Tom, the 20 October Movement, and it morphed into Popular Revolutionary Struggle, called ELA. Its Greek acronym is ELA, E-L-A. So, ELA, ELA saw as its mission, the murder of Greek policemen, because the police were, were working hand in glove with the junta, and with the torturers, and the fascists, and so they, they went around blowing up police vans and, and shooting police recruits and things like that. 17 November, wanted to kill everybody that they deemed

• 43:22Speaker 03

  responsible for the overthrow of the government, and that was officials of the American government, the British government, the French and German governments, the Turkish government, they killed the ambassador and the deputy ambassador, and then fascists who owned newspapers during the junta, the former ministers from the junta, uh, and then anybody who pissed them off, like tax authorities, right? The government announces a tax increase, and then they blow up the tax authority. Or, they, they, they fired an anti-tank rocket at the Minister of Finance, because he made fun of them in a TV interview. Uh, or they killed the Minister of Communication,

• 44:07Speaker 03

  because he happened to be the Prime Minister's son-in-law, and was friendly with the Communist Party. So, it became, yeah, it, it became irrational. And then, this, this culminated in their final action. And, and this is, this is one of the reasons why this became so important in my life. Um, in, uh, in January of 2000, uh, the British Defence Attache was replaced, and the new Defence Attache, Brigadier General Stephen Saunders, he moved in to the house catty corner from mine. Our, our backyards touched each other diagonally, and Stephen

• 44:48Speaker 03

  was an awesome guy. Fun, loud, great sense of humor, the life of every party we went to. We were at a dinner party, one night, and I had just gotten a fully armored BMW 540, that the agency bought for me to use. It was the first 540 that was in Greece. We couldn't even insure it. We had to insure it through a company in Germany, but I needed that big engine to carry all that armor, right? And so, we're at this dinner party, and, and Stephen

• 45:25Speaker 03

  is, Stephen is jokingly making fun of me, and he says, "You Americans, you're so paranoid. This is an EU country, it's a NATO country. What are you so afraid of, with your armored cars and your bulletproof vests?" And I said, "You Brits live in a dream world. If you think because they have palm trees and pretty beaches, that they're not gonna kill you if they have the chance to kill you. Believe me, if they get the chance, they're gonna kill you." Ha, ha, ha, ha. We all laughed. Two weeks later, I slept through my alarm, which I had never

• 46:09Speaker 03

  done. Now, you guys know, having been, you know, in, in the positions that you've been in, you cannot establish a pattern, right? You've got to, you've got to leave your house every day at a different time, you've got to take a different route to work every day, because you can't establish a pattern. That's how they're gonna kill you. Because if you know that you, that you cross through this intersection every day at 8:30, then by God, they're gonna be at that intersection at 8:30, and they're gonna blow up your car. So, I took a, a different route to work every day. I left at a different time every day, never establishing a pattern. But I, I slept through my alarm, this one day, in April, April of 2000. And

• 46:52Speaker 03

  I thought, "Oh my God, I don't have time to do a surveillance detection route. I'm gonna have to just get on the road and just go straight to the embassy." Well, the embassy was exactly 10 miles from my house, just straight down the main road, called KPCS Avenue,

• 47:11Speaker 03

  to the embassy. So, I mean, we're talking about like, six lanes, and then a lane on each side of like, service roadway. So, we're talking about an eight-lane, major road, but it's got Jersey barriers. So, once you're on, you're on, you're committed, you can't get off. I get on KPCS, and it's a parking lot, like Cairo or Bangkok. And I was like, "Oh my God." I mean, traffic's epic in Athens, but not like that. That's ridiculous. So, I did something that I never, ever did. I put on the radio. I never wanted to be distracted, because they would come up to you, you know, on the side of your car on a motorcycle, and

• 47:52Speaker 03

  just open fire. And I wanted to not be distracted, I wanted to constantly scan my side-view mirrors, make sure they're not coming up on me, and, um, and I would never play the radio. That day, I played the radio. So, the guy comes on, and he says, "Avoid KPCS Avenue, uh, because there's a traffic incident at Philothae." Philothae was about the halfway point. And I said, "Ah, crap. Five miles of this?" So, I'm inching down the mountain, and then, a half an hour later, 20 minutes later, he comes on, he says, "Avoid KPCS Avenue, there's a criminal incident at Philothae." And I thought, "Jeez, I've never heard that before. A criminal

• 48:36Speaker 03

  incident. At nine o'clock in the morning? What kind of criminal incident could there be?" And as I'm continuing to inch down the mountain, he comes back on, and he says, "Avoid KPCS Avenue, there was a terrorist attack in Philothae." And I thought, "Wow, I never heard that before." Well, I get near enough to the incident, that I see this white Rover, you know, British Rover, um, and it's got police tape around it, and there's blood just splashed all over the, the back windscreen. Well, I noticed that the license plate says

• 49:15Speaker 03

  YBH. Our license plates, Athens was so dangerous, that we were not allowed to have diplomatic license plates. So, we had just regular old license plates, but the Greeks, in their infinite wisdom, gave everybody in the American Embassy license plates that began with the letters YHB. And I thought, "Oh my God, this is YBH. Some innocent Greek, they thought some innocent Greek was an American, and they, and they killed him." And then, I remembered, "Wait a minute, the British Embassy is YBH, and that's Stephen Saunders' car." So, as I get around it, the driver's side window and the passenger's side window are blown

• 49:58Speaker 03

  out, and there's just blood everywhere. So, I called the station, and I said, "Hey, I'm on KPCS right now, and I think Stephen Saunders was just assassinated."

• 50:11Speaker 03

  And he said, what are you seeing? And I, I explained. And he says, hang on, I'm gonna call the British Embassy. So he calls the British Embassy and this poor woman, she says, I'm sorry, Steven's not in quite yet. May I take a message for him? And he said, no, you're not understanding. One of my officers on KVCUS, he's, he's by Steven's car, there's blood everywhere. And he thinks that Steven was assassinated. So they called, um, the nearest hospital, which was the, uh, the Red Cross Hospital. And he was there. Um, a taxi driver pulled him out of the car. The first shot, he was shot with an anti-tank round.

• 50:54Jack Murphy?

  Ah.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  And the first shot completely blew off his, his right hand. And then they shot him three times in the chest with what was called the Welch 45, because it was used to kill our station chief, Dick Welch. And then it was used in most of the subsequent murders after that. That gun was never, uh, recovered. And so, uh, a taxi driver put him in the taxi and got him to Red Cross Hospital, but he died 45 minutes later. And then, um, his wife did a very heroic thing. Um, later that day, she gave an interview to the Greek media. And she said, this was not an attack on my husband. This was not an attack for political reasons. This was a criminal act.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  And it was an attack against every Greek. This is how little respect this organization has for the Greek nation and for the Greek people. And she did it with such dignity that it actually changed Greek public opinion. Cause for, for 27 years, the Greeks were like, eh, they're not killing us. Or the Greeks that they're killing kinda deserved it.

• 52:02Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  Or they're killing Americans, Turks, so we don't really care, you know? Well, beginning then, they, they care.

• 52:09Jack Murphy?

  That's amazing.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  And it turned everything around.

• 52:11Jack Murphy?

  There was, uh, if I recall correctly, John, 17 November sent a letter claiming responsibility for the, uh, the assassination. But if, again, if I recall correctly, they also identified you in the letter.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was a shock to me. What, what 17 November normally did was they would drop a manifesto at the scene of the assassination, usually, not always. Sometimes they would mail it to a Greek newspaper. Sometimes they would put it in a, a garbage can and then call a Greek newspaper and tell them where they could find it. So they did not drop a, a manifesto, um, uh, that day. They waited until August. So from April to August, you know, we're, we're doing the investigation, working with the Greeks and the British and trying to do the investigation. And, and I get in one day and the chief comes in, in a, in a panic. And he says,

• 53:13Speaker 03

  um, did you see the manifesto? And I said, no, I didn't realize that there was a manifesto. And he says, they mentioned you.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  And I said, what do you mean they mentioned me? And he shows it to me and they said in Greek, idameton megalokataskopos, we saw the big spy.

• 53:30Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  But we knew that he was armed, he was in an armored car and that he was armed. So we elected to carry out the revolutionary sentence on the war criminal Saunders.

• 53:42Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  And I said, how could they possibly have found me? I said, I am so careful about my security. I can't believe they found me. We ended up concluding that they were actually looking for Saunders because he was so out there. He was on TV all the time. He's at every party. He's giving interviews to every newspaper. And while they were looking for him, they saw my armored car with a, with a white HB license plate and said, hey, that must be CIA. Who would be driving an armored car? So I said, well, now what? And the chief said, you gotta go. And I said, where? He said, home, like right now.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  I said, you mean home, Washington? I said, my kids are in school right now. I can't, I can't just up and leave. He said, we're gonna, we're gonna pick up your kids at school. We're gonna send another car to pick up your wife. We'll pack out your house, but you gotta go now. And so they drove me to the airport. They sent an armored car to pick up my kids. They sent another armored car to pick up my wife. We all met up at the airport and we were on the 12 o'clock Delta flight back to New York. So, and it was two more years before I ever went back to Greece again.

• 54:59Jack Murphy?

  Wow. John, I, I gotta like ask, I mean, to, I, this is going back in time. So I understand 17 November fighting the junta makes certain amount of sense. And we can kind of relate. It's a dictatorship. 1974, the junta dissolves. But 17 November is still around and now we fast forward to the year 2000. And here they are whacking a British defense attaché and menacing you. I mean, you didn't know it at the time. And the intelligence that they had, uh, implies an intimate knowledge of your security protocols and where you are and when. So, I mean, my question is, what is 17 November really?

• 55:43Speaker 03

  Well, that's such a good question. You know, we, we used to debate this amongst ourselves all the time. And we used to sort of halfway joke that, um, that 17 November, it had to be like a bunch of 70 year old guys on, on, um, motorcycles.

• 56:02Jack Murphy?

  Like the Bandermine off gang, yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, like the, like the Bader Minehoff gang. And so it turned out that that was actually kind of the case for some of them. They were, they were, you know, senior citizens, true believers, but they would recruit like really trustworthy people, people that they could, they could rely on to keep their secret. And several cycled out, a couple more would cycle in. But the core of the organization was there since 70, you know, 74, 75. The first killing was the CIA station chief, Richard Welch. And you know, Dick Welch, this was a really sad story because Dick Welch had just arrived in Greece.

• 56:47Speaker 03

  He was, he had only been in Greece about six weeks and he was a real Phil Helling. He had studied, um, ancient Greek in, in college. He had done archaeological digs. He, he spoke modern Greek. And he had just arrived. And he went to the ambassador's Christmas party, December 23rd, 1975. He and his wife and their driver went back to, uh, to his house after the party. And, um, you know, those were the days before the electric gates. So the driver had to stop the car, get out to open the gate. And when he did that,

• 57:22Jack Murphy?

  They shot him.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  There were four people in a car parked across the street, three men and a woman. Two of the men got out and shouted his name, Richard Welch, get out of the car. And he got out of the car. So did Mrs. Welch. The driver ran for his life. And, um, he got out of the car and they said, Richard Welch, you have been found guilty of crimes against the Greek people and you've been sentenced to death. And then they shot him three times with the 45. Um, the Greeks were so backward at the time that they couldn't find the getaway car. And so one of the shooters called the police and said, you morons, the car is parked at, and then he gave them an address.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  And so then they went and got the car. Uh, but not only were they never able to catch anybody, they were never even able to identify anybody. We had, I'm not exaggerating when I tell you, we had 1,200 suspects. There ended up being nine members of 17 November and we were right on three of them.

• 58:32Jack Murphy?

  And

• 58:32Speaker 03

  That's how secretive this group.

• 58:34Jack Murphy?

  So, I mean, I presumably from what you're telling me, I mean, you were eventually, or the Greek government or the CIA was able to unmask this organization down the line. I, who, who did these guys turn out to be?

• 58:48Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. So we, I, I wish we could take credit and, and the Greeks, the Greeks actually get more credit than we do and they deserve more credit. Um, one member of 17 November, Savas Ksiros, uh, was carrying a bomb in the city of Piraeus, uh, that he was going to put underneath the limousine of a Greek ship owner. And the bomb went off in his hands and it blew his hands off. And so as he was laying there on the ground, bleeding to death, he decided to make a deathbed confession. And he said, I'm 17 November. Here's the location of the safe house.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  Here's the location of the guns and the weapons and the rockets. And these are the other, uh, members of the, uh, organization. And then he lived. He survived. Yeah. So it turned out we were right about the leader of 17 November, a guy named Alexandros Yotopoulos. We were, we did not know the actual, uh, hitman. Um, his nickname was the Black Hand because everything he touched died. And then the, the core of 17 November was three sons of a priest from Thessaloniki. You know, I talk about, you know, daddy issues.

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Um, and then there were a couple that cycled in and out. One was, was a labor leader. One was a, a sixth grade teacher. Uh, one was a mechanic. But, um, they were all wrapped up. The Greeks ended up getting all of them. The, the only things that they didn't find, they didn't find the Welch 45. And they didn't find the typewriter, the old school manual typewriter that they would write the manifestos on.

• 1:00:43Speaker 04

  These guys obviously had good tradecraft, good opsec.

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  Where, who amongst them was trained, or where do you think they got their training from?

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, also a good question. So, the answer, I think, is something you're gonna be, you're gonna be fascinated by. Um, they were never trained by anybody. Uh, they got their weapons from Carlos the Jackal. And, but we were never able to put them in any of the Libyan, um, uh, training camps, where, you know, everybody else was trained, Badr Meinhoff and Red Brigades and Aktion Direct and IRA and PFLP, PFLP, G C. The Greeks were never, Ella was there.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  But 17 November, it was all, it was all done in-house. Now, the interesting thing was, in 1968, the Uruguayan Defense Attache in Paris was assassinated. And for the life of them, nobody could figure out who did it, or why in the world anybody would want to assassinate the Uruguayan Defense Attache in Paris. It turned out that was 17 November's first hit. And they did it as a practice hit, to see if they could get away with it, and to see what lessons they could learn in the getaway.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  And it worked. You know, the element of surprise, untraceable weapons. You hit somebody who has no idea that he's even at risk of being hit, and you get away with it. And so they did.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  It's amazing. I mean,

• 1:02:25Jack Murphy?

  So there's like, yeah, organic warning in the field.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. I, I mean, it's just, it's really hard to believe, though, because it's, there, there are so many ways to leave traces. There are so many, like, it, it's hard to believe that nobody taught them anything.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, you know, in, in this day and age, too, I, 1975 is not 2024.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  With forensics and DNA now, I, I can't imagine that something like this would be successful. And, you know, in, when I was stationed in Greece, they made some serious mistakes. Uh, besides multiple shootouts with the cops, and the cops were such bumbling fools that 17 November got away. Um, they launched a rocket attack on the home of the German ambassador. And for some reason, the, the rocket misfired. When the guy put it up on his shoulder, it misfired and it cut his neck. And so he bled pretty profusely on the sidewalk. So I ran out there with a colleague of mine, um, and, and members of the Greek police, and there was this blood all over the sidewalk. And I said, we gotta test the blood. We gotta test the DNA.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  They were like, yeah, but then how are we gonna do that? It's on concrete. It's, I said, take the whole fucking sidewalk. So we, we, like, literally, we went to the Greek version of Home Depot and bought sledgehammers. And we, we broke up the sidewalk and carried it away. We put it in a diplomatic pouch. We sent it back to Washington. The, the agency gave it to, uh, the FBI Quantico. They ran a DNA, uh, test, and there was no match in any system. Interpol, the Greeks, the Americans, no match. But at least we had the DNA.

• 1:04:10Jack Murphy?

  Right, for later.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  And it turned out, well, we learned, we learned two and a half years later, that was Subes Ksidos's DNA. The German ambassador had said something in some interview that he didn't like, so he fired a rocket at the guy's house.

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  It's, it's, it's wild. I, you know, I, I normally we save questions to the end of the show, but I just saw one pop up that has to do with this. How did, how did these random Greeks hook, uh, get hooked up with Carlos the Jackal? I mean, we're, this is before the internet, or like, this is, like, how does that happen?

• 1:04:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, way, way before the internet. You know, that, that's a terrific question, too. Was that from one of your viewers?

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a terrific question. I, um, it, it took me almost a year of asking permission to interview Carlos in prison in, uh, in Paris. And so what I did at first, once I got all the permissions, you know, in the headquarters chain of command, I, I reached out to his wife. We found her living in some little town in Germany. And I, I went and I said, look, you know, I know you're out of the game. She and Carlos had a daughter together. I know you're out of the game. I know that you're, you know, trying to make a life for yourself. We're not interested in making any trouble for Carlos. He's serving life without parole for killing a whole bunch of French policemen.

• 1:05:29Speaker 03

  Um, I said, we want the Greeks. We promised Mrs. Welch in 1975 that we wouldn't rest until we found her husband's killers. I said, I want to talk to Carlos, and I want to know who he's dealt with, what Greeks he's dealt with over the years. So she actually got in touch with Carlos for me. And, and then, you, you know, you gotta, you gotta send a, a formal request to the French, and then they're jerks about it, and then you have to keep asking over and over again. And, and then finally, the French said yes. So I flew, I flew to Paris and went with a French to the prison. And, um, and Carlos comes into the room, and he's just a little tiny old man now. I mean, this, and this was 24 years ago.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  So even 24 years ago, he was a little tiny thing. And, um, and I told him, you know, who I was and why I was there. And I had spoken to, uh, Magdalena, his, his wife, Magdalena Kopp. And, um, we were interested in the, in the Greeks, and he smiled, and he said, go fuck yourself. So we never learned what the nexus was between Carlos and the Greeks.

• 1:06:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  We had multiple forces tell us that it was Carlos that provided the weapons. Um, but we never could figure out the genesis of that relationship.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  It, it's very interesting, though, because, again, when you think of how isolated the world was before the internet, you know, you, you, you can't just, like, look up a classified ad for Carlos the Jackal, right? Like, you can't look him up in the phone book. Um,

• 1:07:01Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that came together somewhere. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Jack Murphy?

  I, so,

• 1:07:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Jack Murphy?

  Then, so this is, uh, we've been talking about, about the timeframe 2000, and then 9/11 happens. And what is the, what is sort of the next step in your, your CIA career after that?

• 1:07:22Speaker 03

  Right. Well, you know, 9/11, it's funny to me. I, I teach a grad school class at the University of Salamanca in Spain. And, um, I just got back from Spain a few weeks ago. It, it's called the History of Terrorism. So we spent a lot, a lot of time, uh, on, on these issues and these groups, and, you know, three full days on Carlos the Jackal. And, um, and then we transitioned to 9/11. And I'm talking to these students, grad school students. I'm talking to them like, you know, 9/11 is as fresh in their minds as it is in mine. Because in my mind, 9/11 happened last Tuesday.

• 1:08:03Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Right?

• 1:08:04Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  And one of them raised her hand, and she said, Professor, you realize that all of us were born after 9/11, right? And I said, oh, my God, no, I didn't realize that. Oh, my God. Okay. We're gonna start from the beginning. So on the morning of 9/11, I was in CTC, the Counterterrorism Center. And I was, I had a nine o'clock appointment, uh, 9:30 appointment with Condoleezza Rice. She was the National Security Advisor at the time, and I was going with Kofor Black, who was the, the, uh, Director of CTC.

• 1:08:43Speaker 03

  Um, and we were going for a very quaint reason. Uh, the, the government printing office was preparing to publish a book called Foreign Relations, uh, an installment of a, of a series of books, called Foreign Relations of the United States, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, 1947 to 1969.

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  This book is like a thousand pages long, and it's every cable sent or received by those embassies between 1947 and 1969.

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  But three of those cables, buried in those thousand pages, mentioned sources, clandestine sources who were still alive. And so, rather than resettle them in the United States for their own safety, and you give them a million dollars and give them, uh, different names, we were gonna ask Condi if she would just take the cables out, right? Nobody's gonna miss them. Nobody's even gonna read this book.

• 1:09:42Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:09:42Speaker 03

  Except a couple of eggheads working on their PhDs. So I got a call from the driver saying that the car was ready to take us to the White House. And I go over to Kofor's office, and his secretary, you know, her desk was right outside his office. And in those days, we couldn't watch TV on our computers, so she had a little TV on her desk. And one of the towers of the World Trade Center was on fire. And I said, well, what happened to the World Trade Center? And she said, a, a plane flew into it. And, because I'm stupid, I said, uh, I said, huh, you know, that happened once before. In 1932, a plane flew into the, uh, Empire State Building, but it was really rainy and foggy then, and it's so crystal clear today.

• 1:10:28Speaker 03

  How can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center?

• 1:10:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 03

  And then as soon as I said that, the second plane hit.

• 1:10:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  And then she, she turns to me like this, and she says, did you see that, or did I imagine it? And then to make a long story short, like everybody else in the building, I volunteered to go to Afghanistan to do whatever was required of me and they kept passing me over. And I kept volunteering over and over and over again. And finally, I went to the deputy director's office. He was an old friend of mine. And I said, I said, if you don't send me to Afghanistan right now, I am walking straight to Exxon with my Arabic and I'm not looking back. And he goes, all right, all right, take it easy. Can you go to Pakistan?

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  I said, yes. When? He said, tomorrow. I said, yes. What do you want me to do there? He said, I want you to be chief of counterterrorism ops. I said, done. So I called my girlfriend. She later became my wife. She worked a few floors above me. And I said, I gotta go to Pakistan tomorrow. She said, how long? I said, I don't know, six months, 12 months? I don't know. She said, okay, I'll meet you at your apartment. I'll help you pack. And then the next day I flew to Pakistan and, and that, that tour changed the, the course of the rest of my life.

• 1:11:51Speaker 04

  So what, what timeframe was that? Uh, that was, uh,

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  That was January of 2002.

• 1:11:57Speaker 04

  Okay. And what, what was, what was Pakistan, the station of Pakistan like at that time? Because I, and I don't know, uh, the timeframes, but I know at one point in time, like people had an issue with the, uh, the ambassador in Pakistan because he was sort of a fan of Pakistan, uh, you know, in terms of like doing ops. What, what was it like for you walking into that situation?

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  Oh, it was, it was the Wild West. Uh, you know, everybody, pretty much everybody had been evacuated. So the only people who were there were CIA.

• 1:12:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:12:37Speaker 03

  And FBI. Yeah. And the ambassador, actually, the ambassador was replaced halfway through my, my time there because there was a terrorist attack on, on a Christian church next door to the embassy. And, um, and seven people were killed, including two, uh, two embassy officers. And the ambassador just kind of, um, kind of cracked and, um, and went home.

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  Just went back. Yeah. They, they withdrew her. She went home and she was replaced by another ambassador. But, I mean, everybody knew the mission. There was no diplomacy that was going to take place. This was all about killing Al Qaeda. Period. That was it. That was the mission. And then at the same time, you know, I, I've always told this story that has always struck me as funny. Um, there was a very, very junior officer who was working for me. She had never served overseas before. And, um, and the embassy has an absolutely enormous cafeteria that on the weekends is converted

• 1:13:46Speaker 03

  into a nightclub. And they have, they have like Filipino cover bands that come and, and you can drink and they've got a disco ball going and that way you never have to leave the, the compound. And so we go down there and this cafeteria can hold, you know, 300 people. And we went right at 12 noon and we were the only two people in the cafeteria. And she looks around and she goes, where is everybody? And I said, they've been evacuated. And she goes, everybody? And I said, yes. She goes, why? And I said, don't you read

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  the papers? Pakistan's gonna have a nuclear war with India like any minute now. And she goes, what are you talking about? I said, did you notice that big helicopter that's in the parking lot? Yes. I go, it's here to rescue us. We're the last ones left. She's like, oh my God, I gotta focus on something other than Al Qaeda. And they go, yeah, because we don't have enough to worry about.

• 1:14:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:14:52Speaker 03

  Now the Indians are gonna nuke us because they're pissed off about something. And, um, we just, you know, took it from there. You just deal with it.

• 1:15:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 03

  They ended up, of course, you know, not nuking each other and we could focus on Al Qaeda. But, yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on and you, you have to be as single minded as you possibly can.

• 1:15:13Speaker 04

  You know, Pakistan is such an interesting story to me because everybody, like the war happened in Afghanistan, but a large number of the people we are fighting in Afghanistan were armed, trained, living in Pakistan. And yet we couldn't take the war to them there. Did you hear me?

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39Speaker 03

  You're absolutely, yes, you're absolutely correct. This is something that, that most Americans, I think, don't understand. Um, the word, the word Taliban is the plural of the word Taleb. And Taleb in both Arabic and Pashto, um, means student, right? So, um, in 1994, Pakistani trucks that were crossing Afghanistan on their way to sell their goods in Iran were being hijacked by, by bandits. And so Benazir Bhutto said, we need some kind of security for these trucks. We should take these, these, you know, Taliban who

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  are studying in our schools and we should put them on the trucks to protect the trucks. We'll give them an AK-47. They just sit there, ride, riding, literally riding shotgun and protect the trucks. And that started to work. And so they came up with this idea, well, instead of having them sitting in the trucks, we should put them in the villages along the truck route, right through Kandahar province, Helmand province, those traditionally, um, um, Pashtun regions of, of Afghanistan. So, once they were placed in those villages, they took over the villages and recruited other people to join the Taliban. All of

• 1:17:06Speaker 03

  a sudden, they're overthrowing the Afghan government and, you know, installing themselves. So it was the Pakistanis and the Pakistani intelligence service that created the Taliban, which then in turn began to train and to arm groups that were opposed to the Pakistani government.

• 1:17:27Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:28Speaker 03

  Because it wasn't radical enough.

• 1:17:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:17:30Speaker 03

  It was this Frankenstein monster that the Pakistanis created. And you know, people ask me all the time, were you able to trust the Pakistani intelligence service? And I, I always get the same answer. In my mind, there were two Pakistani intelligence services. There was the guys that I worked with in counterterrorism, they were all educated at Sandhurst in the UK and they would lay down their lives for us. And then there were the guys that created the Taliban with the long beards, giving you the stink eye when you're walking down the hall of their, of their headquarters and, you know, probably plotting your assassination.

• 1:18:11Speaker 04

  The real regime.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  And so,

• 1:18:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So it was a challenge, you know, keeping the honest people honest.

• 1:18:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it's like, and one of the things about like the Taliban and that brand, like it's not even, it's its own brand of like, uh, Islamic fundamentalism, right? Because it's, it's merged with this ancient Pashtun Wali, this ancient tribal culture that brings these old, old ways together with, with Islam and this very fundamental belief in Islam. Um, and it just, it's, it's a, it's a stony, not, not stonage, but it's an ancient, you know, you know, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's an ancient cult in a way, merging those two.

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  Very much so. Very much so. And, and that's why even years after, after taking over that government, they only had diplomatic relations with three countries, with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

• 1:19:11Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  You know, that's why they blew up the, uh, the, the giant Buddhas because they were, they were carved in, you know, man's image.

• 1:19:20Speaker 04

  Up in Bamiyan.

• 1:19:21Speaker 03

  And that's a sin.

• 1:19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, up in Bamiyan, I think, yeah.

• 1:19:23Speaker 03

  Yes, up in Bamiyan, exactly.

• 1:19:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Jack Murphy?

  Start to, start to talk us a little bit through like the tail end of your CIA career and exit from the agency.

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I led the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March of 2002. And we believed wrongly at the time that he was the number three in Al Qaeda. And when I went back to headquarters, man, I was a star. And I was very quickly promoted and named the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. And in that position, you have access to literally everything that the CIA is doing around the world. You're read into every compartment, which is not a good thing. You know, there are some things I just wish I had never, I had never learned about what some of my colleagues were up to.

• 1:20:17Speaker 03

  Well, it was then that we decided to implement this torture program that they called enhanced interrogation techniques. I was strongly opposed to it. And I was actually approached and asked if I wanted to be trained in it so I could go out to the field and begin, you know, torturing these guys. I said, I had a moral and ethical problem with it, besides the fact that I believed very strongly that it was illegal. And so I declined. They asked 14 people if we wanted to go through the training, and I regret to say I was the only one who declined. So I left in 20, let's see, 2004.

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  I left for the private sector. And, you know, between 2002 and 2004, I kept waiting for somebody to say something about this torture program. We're getting cables back where people are resigning because of the torture. One secretary that watched a torture session fainted. We were getting cables from doctors in the Office of Medical Services saying, I'm curtailing my assignment, I'm coming home, this is a violation of my Hippocratic oath, it's not something that I signed up for. And I thought, surely somebody is going to say something publicly to stop this abomination.

• 1:21:46Speaker 03

  And, and nobody did. And then in December of 2007, I got a call from Brian Ross at ABC News. He said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah. I said, absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah. And he said, well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself. I had no idea that that was an old reporter's trick. I had never spoken to a reporter before. Well, to make a very long story very short, I gave him an interview in December of 2007 in which I said, number one, that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. Number two, torture was official US government policy.

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  It was not the result of a rogue CIA officer, which is something that President Bush had said. And I said that the CIA, I'm sorry, I said that the torture program had been, had been personally approved by the president. It was, it was under his signature. And all hell broke loose. Within 24 hours, the CIA asked the FBI to investigate me. And the FBI did exactly that from December of 07 to December of 08. And then they sent my attorneys what's called a declination letter, declining to prosecute me. They said that they had done the investigation and that I had not, they had determined I had not committed a crime.

• 1:23:12Speaker 04

  Could I, could I ask you real quick? What did they, what was their impetus? Like, what did they ask you or ask the FBI to investigate you for? What was, just anything that you did, they're just supposed to dig through your life? Or what?

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  No, it was for the illegal disclosure of classified information under the Espionage Act. Yeah. But the thing is, is, you know, Human Rights Watch had written a paper saying the CIA is torturing its prisoners. Amnesty International did the same thing. And the International Committee of the Red Cross, same thing. This was the worst kept secret in Washington. Everybody knew that the CIA had a torture program. Everybody knew. Everybody knew that they had secret prisons. Somebody leaked that in 2000, I don't know what, five or six or something. So the FBI said, no, it's not a violation. And besides, it's actually against the law to classify a criminal act. Right?

• 1:24:10Speaker 03

  If, if something is a crime, you can't classify it for the purpose of keeping it from the American people. And torture's a crime. I don't care what John U and Jay Bybee say, or Dick Cheney, torture's a crime. If you want to torture somebody, okay, change the law. But the law was crystal clear. So a month later, Barack Obama becomes president. He initially names John Brennan as the CIA director. The liberals were up in arms and that nomination was withdrawn. So he then named Brennan the Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism. John Brennan and I always hated each other.

• 1:24:52Speaker 03

  And so Brennan asked the Justice Department to secretly reopen the case against me. And I had no idea I was being investigated for the next three years. They, they had taps on my phones. They intercepted my emails. They would put these teams of FBI agents to follow me. They followed us into church, into Target, to my kid's school, out to restaurants. And then in January of 2012, I was charged with three counts of espionage coming out of the, the ABC News interview and a subsequent interview I gave to the New York Times in which I just said exactly the same thing.

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  They charged me with a count of making a false statement, which we were never exactly sure what the false statement was supposed to have been. And then they charged me with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981. And so, you know what they do? It's, it's a tried and true strategy. They, they charge stack, they, they throw all these different charges at you, then they wait until you go bankrupt from legal fees, which I quickly did. And then they come back and they offer to drop all the charges but one if you take a plea. So I was looking at 45 years.

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  Had I gone to trial, according to my attorneys, I was realistically looking at 12 to 18 years, or I can take their deal and do 23 months. And so, you know, when, when, according to ProPublica, the government wins 98.2% of its cases, and you have five kids.

• 1:26:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:26:35Speaker 03

  What do you do?

• 1:26:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  Right. All those dice, knowing you have a 1.8% chance of winning? Or you take the deal?

• 1:26:43Jack Murphy?

  What, what do you think was John Brennan's beef with you that he encouraged this investigation?

• 1:26:49Speaker 03

  He was public about it. He, he was public about it. I aired the agency's dirty laundry and I should have kept my big mouth shut.

• 1:26:56Speaker 04

  Gotcha. Do you think that, I mean, obviously, you think that Obama would have some level of control over that? Do you think that Obama was neutral about it, agreed with it?

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  No. Obama had a Nixonian obsession with national security leaks. And, and I got that from people who were, you know, directly working, directly face to face with Obama. He was obsessed with national security leaks, unlike anything they had seen since Richard Nixon. And so, you know, between the passage of the Espionage Act in 1917 and 2009, three people were charged with espionage for speaking to the media. Just under Obama, eight people were charged with espionage for speaking to the media. Almost three times all previous presidents combined.

• 1:27:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, they came after.

• 1:27:50Speaker 03

  And that was in large part thanks to John Brennan.

• 1:27:52Speaker 04

  But, but wasn't, I mean, wasn't Obama responsible for releasing the names of the people involved with like the brick factory and everything like that? Like.

• 1:28:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. He was. And just like Leon Panetta was responsible for exposing the names of the, of the, the special forces guys who killed Osama bin Laden, just like David Petraeus was responsible for exposing the names of 10 covert operatives to his adulterous girlfriend. And all of that is perfectly fine.

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  But if you embarrass the agency, then there's a price to pay.

• 1:28:28Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you, you didn't have enough stars on your lapel to protect you.

• 1:28:32Speaker 03

  Oh my God, I say that all the time. If I had four shiny stars right here.

• 1:28:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, it's wild. It's wild that he has, that you say that Obama has this obsession with it, but then he released names of people who are acting on, at the behest of the government, doing the job the government asked them to do. And then all these, all these people have to like move and hide and have security teams on them because they released.

• 1:28:59Jack Murphy?

  I, I, I've seen it myself in my own work where, you know, somebody high ranking, maybe General McRaven can get away with saying things publicly, but you know, if you're a specialist E4 in the army.

• 1:29:14Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, you're done.

• 1:29:15Jack Murphy?

  And you, you say the exact same thing that he said.

• 1:29:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Jack Murphy?

  You're, you're done. Yeah, you're finished.

• 1:29:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:22Speaker 03

  Absolutely true, absolutely true. That's, I mean, that's how Washington works. And you guys know the old saying from Harry Truman, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." You can't rely on anybody else.

• 1:29:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so you take the plea bargain, and now you're going to, is it federal prison?

• 1:29:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, federal prison.

• 1:29:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Tell us about that experience.

• 1:29:46Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I wrote another book about that experience. I, it was called, "Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison." I never had any intention at all of writing a book. But in sentencing, my attorneys asked the judge to send me to a minimum-security work camp. And minimum security, there are no bars on the, on the windows. The doors aren't locked. There are no fences or anything. You're free to come and go as you please. You're on your honor not to run away. And most, most of those guys work in town. There's a little university in town. You go, you know, sweep the floors or whatever. And the judge asked the Justice Department if they had any objection, and they said no.

• 1:30:31Speaker 03

  So she sentenced me to, to this minimum-security work camp. Well, when I got there, it's, it's odd. You just, you just drive up to the prison and you knock on the door. And you say, you know, "I'm here to turn myself in." So the guy says to me, "Oh, you gotta go across the street to the, to the prison, the actual prison. They'll process you, and then they'll bring you back over here." I said, "Okay." So I go across the street, I knock on that door. I said, "I'm John Kiriakou, I'm here to turn myself in." And the guy takes me, he starts taking me around to the back of the actual prison. And I said, "No, no, I'm supposed to be at the, at the camp across the street."

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  And he kinda chortles. He goes, "Huh, not according to my paperwork, you're not." And I was like, "Oh, my God, take it easy. There's nothing you can do. If you raise a stink, they're just gonna put you in solitary." I didn't say a word.

• 1:31:33Speaker 03

  So... They processed me, and the whole time, I'm telling myself, "You can do this. You've lived in far worse places than Loretto, Pennsylvania. You can do this." My... The, the guard who processed me took me to my cell. And the only thing he said to me in this whole thing, this whole experience, was, "If somebody comes into your room uninvited, that's an act of aggression." I was like, "Great. I've been here 40 minutes, I'm gonna get my ass kicked." So... We get to the cell, and he just says, "Home sweet home," and he walks away.

• 1:32:15Speaker 03

  So I didn't know what to do, so I, I, I took a nap, actually. And I think it was because I was in shock. But I, I wake up, I don't know, a half hour later, and I'm sitting in this plastic chair. Every cell gets a, a plastic chair. And, um... And these two guys just walk right into my cell. One had this swastika that took up his entire neck, that came up onto his face. And the other one had "Fuck you" tattooed on his eyelids, so every time he blinked.

• 1:32:48Jack Murphy?

  So two, so two other white-class, white-collar limber...

• 1:32:51Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:32:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, in, in club fed.

• 1:32:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  Which, there is no such thing as club fed, by the way. So I, I jump up, I put up my fist, I'm like, "What do you want?" Because I thought, "Man, if I'm going down, I'm taking somebody with me." So one of them says, "Take it easy. Are you the new guy?" I go, "Yeah." He goes, "Um, are you a fag?" I said, "No, I'm not a fag." He goes, "Are you a, are you a rat?" I said, "No, I didn't have anybody in my case. I'm not a rat." He goes, "Are you a chomo?" I go, "I, I don't know what that word means." He goes, like, yes, he goes, "Chomo, child molester." I said, "No, I'm not a child molester." He goes, "Okay, you can sit with the Aryans in the cafeteria."

• 1:33:41Speaker 03

  And I was like, "Oh, okay." Thinking, "Great, now I'm with the Aryans now."

• 1:33:49Speaker 03

  It was very stressful.

• 1:33:53Speaker 03

  A couple of days later, this black guy walks into my cell, and this guy is like, 200 pounds of knotted muscle, this perfect human specimen. And he's got a newspaper in his hands, and of course, I jump up again, I'm like, "What do you want?" And he gingerly hands me this newspaper, and I see that it's the, it's called the National, The National Call, I think is what it was. It was, it was the newspaper of the Nation of Islam. And he says, "Are you the CIA guy?" And I said, "Yeah." And still, I'm like this. I go, "Yeah." And he says, "Reverend Farrakhan says you're a hero of the Muslim people."

• 1:34:34Jack Murphy?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:34:35Speaker 03

  "I just wanted to tell you that you're not gonna have any problems with us." I said, "Oh, okay." He never spoke to me again, because they don't speak to the white devil. But he just wanted to say, you know, that I wasn't gonna have a problem. So four of my five cellmates were members of different, um, Mexican cartels. Burachos, Norteños, MS-13, I forget what. And one of them said to me, "Um, are you educated?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Would you write my appeal?" And I said, "Well, I'm not. I'm not a lawyer." "Yeah, but you said you're educated." And I said, "Yeah, okay. I, how hard could it possibly be to write an appeal?"

• 1:35:17Speaker 03

  I go, "Give me your, give me your case papers. Let me ask you a couple of questions." Um, "Are you guilty?" And he goes, "Yeah, I'm guilty." He had the bullet hole scars in him from the shootout with the DEA. So I wrote this, I wrote this appeal, and, and the appeal was denied, of course. Um, but he told all the other cartel guys that, um, that I was honest and that I didn't charge him. So, uh, so the Mexicans left me alone. And then finally, I was directly across the hall from, from the number three in the, uh, in the Banano Prime family.

• 1:35:57Speaker 03

  And, uh, I would get the New York Times every day. He would get the New York Post, and we would trade after, after we, uh, finished our papers. And he said to me one day, "Um, let me ask you something." He says, "Why do you sit with those Nazi retards in the cafeteria?" And I said, "I don't know. My first day here, they, they told me to sit with them." And then very dramatically, he goes, "From today, you're with the Italians." And so I, I was with the Italians after that. You know, there, there was one guy. My, my brother, my brother rented an apartment from Carlo Gambino's sister for nine years, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

• 1:36:37Speaker 03

  And so he called me right before I left prison, and he said, "Listen, there's a very bad guy in this prison. You need to stay away from him." And he told me who it was. I, I probably shouldn't say his name. But, um, he was the actual boss of one of the families, one of the five families.

• 1:36:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, the Bananos are one of the five families.

• 1:37:02Speaker 03

  And, and the Bananos were really kind to me. I, I, in fact, I talked to one of them three, three hours ago. So, um...

• 1:37:12Speaker 03

  I stayed away from this guy, and you'd see him walking around, you know, every once in a while. And he, he's completely encircled by these six bodyguards, hangers-on. So I'm sitting in my cell one day, and I'm reading the Times. And I see this movement out of my peripheral, from my peripheral vision. I turn, and it's, it's a guy we used to call Stupid Tony, because his eyes were crossed, right? So I turn, and I said, "Hey." And he goes, "The boss wants to see you." And I said, "He wants to see me? Like, I've actively avoided this guy."

• 1:37:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:47Speaker 03

  He goes, "Let's go." I was like, "Oh, my God." So I get up, and, um, and, uh, I follow him, like, to the extreme opposite end of the prison. We go into the guy's room, and it's full of people. So he's sitting in one of the plastic chairs, and another guy's on his knees, and he's clipping the boss's toenails. And I'm just standing in the doorway. Finally, when his toenails are done, um, he gets up, he brushes his teeth, he spits into the sink, and it, the spit gets all over the, the rim of the, the basin. There's a guy right behind him, sleeping in a bunk bed, and he punches the bunk bed. And he get, he goes, "Hey, get up, clean this shit up." The guy jumps out of the bed, cleans it up.

• 1:38:32Speaker 03

  Finally, I go,

• 1:38:35Speaker 03

  I said, "Uh, excuse me, did you want to see me?" He goes, "Come in, sit down." I go in and sit down. He goes, "You the CIA guy?" I said, "I am." "You write a book?" I said, "I did." "Your book do good?" I said, "Actually, I did very well. I, I made number five on the New York Times Bestsellers list." And he goes like this, he goes, "You're gonna write my book." And I said, "Oh, okay." He goes, "I'm gonna tell you stories, and you're gonna write my book." I said, "All right, let's think about this for a minute."

• 1:39:17Speaker 03

  I said, "You know, books of this genre are usually written by rats." And they spend the first half of the book talking about all the cool things they've done. And the second half of the book, they spend trying to justify why they turned rat. And I said, "You're definitely not a rat, and you probably shouldn't talk about the cool things you've done."

• 1:39:42Speaker 03

  Silence among these dozen guys around me. And he, he looks like this, he goes, "Hadn't thought of that."

• 1:39:52Speaker 03

  Never mind. But from that day on, I was invited to every Italian dinner, every Italian party. We walked the track in the yard together. I gained 35 pounds in prison, because they had a crooked guard on payroll, and he would bring in the pork loin, and the wine for the marsala sauce, and the fresh tomatoes and mushrooms, and pasta, and chicken. And every night was this banquet of restaurant-quality Italian food. And so...

• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  I didn't have to worry about it.

• 1:40:34Speaker 04

  I I I'm curious how how the like the dynamics uh were. You know, you you sit with the Aryans at first and those must have been great conversations. Actually, I'm joking because people like. I'm sure you had normal conversations with those guys too, because there were there had to be like a layer of there had to be a layer of normalcy there, but but you're sitting with the Aryans. How did they react when you started sitting with this? You the boss that invited you over uh like was there tension?

• 1:41:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:09Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, there were two or three guys who said, oh, you think you're better than we are. And I'm like, no, no, no. I said, listen, I'm Greek, they're Italian. We both hate the FBI the same amount. I'm just gonna hang with them and and for, you know, ninety five percent of them that that was cool. They didn't care.

• 1:41:28Speaker 04

  So you you hadn't gotten your swastika tattoos just yet.

• 1:41:33Speaker 03

  Say that again?

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  I'm just saying you hadn't gotten your swastika tattoos just yet.

• 1:41:37Speaker 03

  I know, right? Like, and and they would pressure me like, at least get like a string of barbed wire around your bicep. I'm like, no, I don't want to look like you guys.

• 1:41:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:47Speaker 03

  A barbed one. I don't want any souvenir of this place.

• 1:41:50Speaker 04

  Right, right. Yeah. That's funny, but but you said that like ninety like seventy like most of them were cool with it. How did you avoid?

• 1:42:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:01Speaker 04

  How did you avoid issues with the guys that weren't cool with it? Or and not just with the Aryans, but with anybody, obviously, there are people who are outside those groups or or whatever.

• 1:42:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, also a good question. So every um there everybody has to be a member of a group or a gang. You can't survive if you're if you're by yourself.

• 1:42:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:42:27Speaker 03

  And so you've got the Aryans, you have the Italians, you have the blacks who are divided between the the Crips and the Bloods uh and their affiliates, and then you have the Hispanics, which are, you know, a dozen different groups. Um, even the child molesters have their own where what's called a shock collar. So there's one shock collar for every one of these groups or gangs. And if you have a problem with somebody from another race or another group, you go to your shock collar. And he'll go to the other guy's shock collar and they negotiate a settlement. That way, they reduce the level of violence. Well, the Italians were the smallest group in the prison, but they were the most highly respected.

• 1:43:11Speaker 03

  And so they had kind of a an easy relationship with the Aryans. And then the blacks, the Hispanics, um and everybody else just kind of left the Italians alone. Because the Italians had a very long arm, you know? You piss somebody off in prison. All it takes is a is a phone call to a to somebody back in Queens and uh and you're gonna have a heap of problems on your on your chest.

• 1:43:36Speaker 04

  The Italians know how to run a racket. There's no denying it.

• 1:43:41Speaker 03

  I'll tell you what, what I I was there for about a month. And this this boss that I told you about uh was in the visiting room one day when my wife and kids came to see me. And we were sitting in the same row, so you could put two prisoners in one row of about a dozen chairs and then family members directly across from them. So I'm there with my wife and kids and and your kids are allowed to sit on your lap. But you you can't have any physical contact with your spouse other than a kiss when they arrive and a kiss when they leave. And I mean a peck on the cheek kind of kiss. So I'm there with my kids, my wife is across from me, the boss is

• 1:44:22Speaker 03

  you know, three, four seats down, and there are three old gray haired men sitting across from him. And they're just sitting there and they're not saying anything. And then finally, the boss says to the first one. You talked to Paolo? And the old man says. I talked to Paolo. He sends his regards. And then there's like five minutes of silence. And then he says to the second guy. Yeah, he says, he says the second guy. You take care of the thing? And the guy goes. I took care of the thing. It's not gonna be a problem.

• 1:45:04Speaker 03

  Five more minutes of silence.

• 1:45:07Speaker 03

  And then he says uh.

• 1:45:10Speaker 03

  You see Tony? He goes, I saw Tony. He said not to worry.

• 1:45:17Speaker 03

  And then they all stood up and they hugged and they kissed each other on the cheek and they left.

• 1:45:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:21Speaker 03

  And my wife says. What did we just see? And I said, I think that was a mafia sit down.

• 1:45:31Speaker 03

  But.

• 1:45:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have a pebble in my shoe.

• 1:45:33Speaker 03

  They they were perfectly. Yeah, exactly. They're perfectly able to conduct whatever business they need to conduct out in the open. Without any fear of, you know, the the cops intervening or anybody causing any kind of problem for them. I was like, I was impressed, to tell you the truth.

• 1:45:51Speaker 04

  What kind of tradecraft could the agency learn from prison?

• 1:45:58Speaker 03

  Oh, man, thank you. And we did not plant that question.

• 1:46:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:46:03Speaker 03

  So in in this book that I that I wrote, Coming Out of Prison, Doing Time Like a Spy, How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. I actually won two literary awards for this. I won I won the PEN First Amendment Award, which is one of the big four, along with the Pen Faulkner, the Pulitzer and the Edgar Allan Poe. And I won the Forward Reviews Memoir of the Year. So I started writing this book as a joke, right? How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. And I start off with twenty life lessons that I learned at the CIA that got me through prison. And when I say I started off as a joke. You know, we used to have these coffee mugs for sale in the CIA uh gift shop

• 1:46:47Speaker 03

  that said, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations.

• 1:46:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:46:53Speaker 03

  Right? Okay, put that as one of the the twenty life lessons. Um, but there were others like. Let others do your dirty work. Uh, don't trust anybody. Don't be afraid to take a punch. You know, stuff like that. And there were twenty of these. And then I would give examples, like real life examples for each one of these twenty life lessons. And then it became actually quite a serious book. Well, the CIA taught me the skills that I needed to keep myself safe and to remain at the top of the social heap in prison. And then conversely. The CIA can learn a lot about human motivation by studying prisoners. You know, I I said an hour ago that

• 1:47:39Speaker 03

  that my job in in Greece, like the job of any CIA case officer, is very simply to recruit spies to steal secrets. But there's an awful lot of psychological manipulation that comes with that. Well, you can learn volumes worth of information and lessons uh by doing that in prison.

• 1:47:59Speaker 04

  It's amazing. And I apologize. Generally, we read people's books before they come on the show. I was not aware of your book. I'm buy I'm gonna buy it and read it after the fact, but it sounds amazing.

• 1:48:10Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:48:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, it sounds amazing.

• 1:48:12Speaker 03

  Thank you for that. Um, oh, I appreciate it very much.

• 1:48:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it it's really it it's it's really interesting to consider prison like the ultimate testing ground for not necessarily running sources for information. But there but there's definitely a lot in common there, right? Like how to get along, like everything is a cold.

• 1:48:34Speaker 03

  A lot.

• 1:48:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:35Speaker 03

  And and you you live and die in prison based on the quality of the intelligence that you're able to to gather.

• 1:48:42Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:48:42Speaker 03

  I mean, really, that's what it comes down to. Yeah, I I go into detail in the book about how this this pedophile tried to put a hit on me uh in in prison. And it was because my relationships with the black uh groups were so good that they tipped me off. And so I was able to set the pedophile to go down. Uh, which he did hard. Something I was quite proud of.

• 1:49:11Speaker 04

  Could you I? Can you talk about that? Do you want to talk about that or is that probably better not?

• 1:49:17Speaker 03

  Oh, sure.

• 1:49:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Speaker 03

  Oh, no, sure, sure. So this guy. It it's it's kind of a long story, but but he set me up and and two of the black guys came up and said, hey, John, you know, uh, this this pedophile. He was an attorney from uh from Philadelphia who had buggered a twelve year old boy um for five years from twelve to seventeen. Um, he he was furious because I wouldn't allow him to move into my cell. I said, no, my cell is a pedophile free zone. No pedophiles. So um he offered these guys five hundred dollars to to beat me to a bloody pulp. And rather than take the five hundred, they came and warned me.

• 1:50:05Speaker 03

  And so I said, well, I gotta I gotta figure a way to take this guy down. And so I was able to use my CIA skills to recruit another prisoner to plant a shank in the guy's locker. And then uh an anonymous tipster told the cops, hey, that pedo has a shank in his uh in his locker. They went and got him. They arrested him. They charged him with uh having contraband and they transferred him to a medium security prison, another level higher.

• 1:50:37Speaker 04

  It's it's amazing.

• 1:50:39Speaker 03

  Done and done, as we used to say.

• 1:50:41Speaker 04

  I I don't understand.

• 1:50:45Speaker 04

  I don't understand how pedos have any influence can survive can you know I I don't understand that because I I mean the stories are that like they are are PNG in prisons.

• 1:51:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:51:01Speaker 04

  I would like.

• 1:51:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, pedos are not allowed to sit. Yeah, they're not allowed to sit in the day room in the TV room. They're not even allowed to stay in their own cells during the day. They have to get out or they're going to get a beat down. Um, there was one incident when I was there where you could buy olive oil in the in the commissary and one guy um poured a bottle of olive oil into a bowl, put it into the communal microwave and then poured it onto a pedophile's face while he was taking a nap.

• 1:51:32Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  Boiling olive oil.

• 1:51:33Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:51:34Speaker 03

  Put it onto his face because the day before the pedo had been sitting in the guy's chair in the dayroom. And he's like, you know, the rules, no pedophiles in the dayroom. So he burned his face off.

• 1:51:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:48Speaker 03

  So yeah, pedophiles are at the very bottom of the uh of the social ladder.

• 1:51:54Speaker 04

  John, you did about you did about two years in federal prison uh get out. Talk to us about your reintegration into American society as a reformed citizen. I mean, what what was that experience like?

• 1:52:08Speaker 03

  You know what? It was far more difficult than I expected it to be. So many, so many people think, especially especially people who've been incarcerated on white collar uh crimes, we think we can just step right back into our lives again and everything's going to be fine. And that's not the case at all. And so, you know, I couldn't get a job. There there was a, there was a think tank here in Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies that threw me a bone, but it was minimum wage. And um I got rejected at, you know, Safeway and Target and Walmart and I got rejected everywhere. And so I just decided that I was going to have to embrace this.

• 1:52:50Speaker 03

  In fact, my my now ex-wife was extraordinarily supportive and she gave me really great advice. She told me, you have to embrace this. You didn't do anything wrong.

• 1:53:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:53:02Speaker 03

  And so you have to get out there and tell your story over and over and over again. So people understand your perspective. She said, the Justice Department's going to move on to their next victim, which they did. It was Ed Snowden in June of 2013. She said, but you have to grab this by the horns. And she was right. And so that's what I've done. And, you know, I've been able to make a decent living ever since. And to tell you the truth, my children are proud of me and I like the person that I am. I can sleep at night.

• 1:53:35Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:53:36Speaker 03

  Um, I know deep down that I'm on the right side of history on this torture issue. So I just don't care anymore.

• 1:53:43Speaker 04

  Were were you so were you angry? Did you have to let that anger go up with the system, the hypocrisy in the system?

• 1:53:50Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, because it it sounds like like just to add on to that, like when we started the interview, it sounds like you really enjoyed your time at the CIA.

• 1:53:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you did a great job. Like you were recognized for your performance.

• 1:54:02Speaker 03

  I had a backboard. Yeah, I I enjoyed myself. I loved the travel. The work was interesting. And and to answer your your question, yes, I was I was very angry. I was I was especially angry at the hypocrisy. You know, the torturers were never prosecuted. The leakers like, you know, so many former CIA directors, including John Brennan, uh were never were never prosecuted. And so it took me a long time to get over that that anger. Um, and you know, I think the way that I the way that I was able to get over it in the end was just by writing constantly. Um, I I've had a column at uh Consortium News for years. I had a column at Reader Supported News before that.

• 1:54:44Speaker 03

  I have a regular column in Covert Action Magazine. I've written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, many times for the Los Angeles Times. Um, I've written eight books. I'm working on my ninth right now. And so it's it's almost, it's almost a form of therapy to be able to recount these stories. And then I've met, I've met people like, for for example, Muhammadu Udslahe. I don't know if you've ever heard that name before. Or maybe you've heard of the movie The Mauretanian. He was the Mauretanian. This was a guy who was absolutely utterly innocent of any crime,

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  yet we snatched him in Mauritania and took him to Guantanamo and tortured him and kept him there for 14 years. And then said, oh, wrong guy and let him go. And um I talked to Muhammad regularly. And this is a guy who's like, you know, Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, like, eh, no hard feelings, you know? This is just the way life is sometimes. It's not fair. And I'm like, I I don't understand how you can you can come to a conclusion like that. They 14 years of torture at Guantanamo and and you say, no problem? And he said, what am I going to do? He said, they're not going to be guilty. They're not going to feel guilty.

• 1:56:08Speaker 03

  So I should dwell on what happened to me and make myself depressed? I'm not going to do that. And so he's he's gotten over it and and he's, he's a model for for forgiveness.

• 1:56:24Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:56:25Speaker 03

  You know, I I wasn't joking when I told him that he reminded me of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Because I never met anybody who was so comfortable in his own skin and with his own personal history as Muhammadu.

• 1:56:39Speaker 04

  Can can I ask you, you know, because there are obviously different levels of enhanced interrogation and

• 1:56:46Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:56:47Speaker 04

  and you know, and you equate it to torture. And I've been on record on the show before of saying there are certain forms of like enhanced interrogation, like sleep depth that I 100% support for like the short term things of

• 1:57:01Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:57:01Speaker 04

  you know, getting somebody down. Can in your, I I'm just curious to hear your opinion where what the dividing line is and what you feel is right and wrong. And look, I I will say that building rapport with somebody over the long term is the 100% right way and best way to gain information.

• 1:57:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, the FBI is especially good at that. But I agree with you that most of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA used against prisoners um in the early 2000s were not torture. Like grabbing somebody by the lapels and saying, don't go on you, you better answer my question. That's not torture. Or giving somebody a slap on the belly where it leaves a handprint and makes a cracking sound. That's not torture. Um, in most cases, sleep deprivation, as you said, is not torture. In the CIA's case, it was. Because the CIA, look, we know from the American Psychological Association, the APA, that people begin to lose their minds at day seven with no sleep.

• 1:58:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:58:04Speaker 03

  They begin to to die at day nine. But the CIA was authorized to keep people awake for up to 12 days. And we murdered.

• 1:58:14Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Yeah, that, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've always sort of had the idea that if somebody leaves, the exact same person that they, if they leave, the, you know, the bit of or the whatever, um, the same person, the same way they came in, right? No marks, no, you know, whatever. That it probably doesn't hit that, you know, psychological damage. It probably doesn't hit that torture level, but.

• 1:58:41Speaker 03

  I would agree with that. Yes, I would agree with that. But you know, when when you authorize a technique, for example, called walling, where they roll up a towel, they put the towel around your neck and then they slam you into a a plywood wall because plywood has a little bit to give and the towel protects your neck from whiplash. But then they don't use the towel.

• 1:59:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:59:05Speaker 03

  And the wall is made of concrete and not plywood. And then you end up with irreversible brain damage to the point where you can't, you can't participate in your own defense. You know, that's that's torture.

• 1:59:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. I even think the idea of walling sounds a little extreme to what like in my mind.

• 1:59:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I agree.

• 1:59:25Speaker 04

  You know, e- e- e- even that.

• 1:59:28Speaker 03

  I I agree with you.

• 1:59:29Speaker 04

  Um, anyway, it's just interesting because it's um i- i- I I think that, you know, there, like for me, I've been an an apologist for enhanced interrogation, but but in the sense of enhanced interrogation was, you know, making somebody cold, making them hungry, making them sleep deprived over a 24 hour period, not

• 1:59:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:59:52Speaker 04

  not harming them.

• 1:59:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:59:54Speaker 04

  You know, not um

• 1:59:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:59:56Speaker 04

  nothing that like a frat guy or or a a young ranger wouldn't go through through in a hazing period, really.

• 2:00:05Speaker 03

  You're exactly right. I I could not agree more. Yes.

• 2:00:09Speaker 04

  But even walling, like I said, even with the towel seems a little extreme to me.

• 2:00:16Speaker 03

  I agree. And you know, there are legal considerations too. We, we have something called the Federal Torture Act of 1946.

• 2:00:28Speaker 03

  Which specifically outlawed exactly those harshest techniques that we used in, in, beginning in 2002, right? And we executed Japanese soldiers during, after World War II. Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American POWs. That was a death penalty offense to waterboard somebody. And I, I also say, when I, when I give these talks at universities, in January of 1968, The Washington Post ran a front page photograph.

• 2:01:00Speaker 04

  Nation of Iraq. Can I ask, and since you did work Saddam Hussein and, and all that. What, you know, there, there were all these ideas that we went into Iraq because of oil, or because he had tried to assassinate Bush Senior, or all these things. But, but we've also had people on the show who have said, there, there were like, I don't want to say deep state, because that, that, you know, it's such a loaded term, but there were like careerists that had been through several administrations, that had had their eye on Iraq during the Clinton administration, that Iraq was always like something people wanted.

• 2:01:40Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. Absolutely true.

• 2:01:45Speaker 03

  I, I was intimately involved in the planning for the Iraq war as, as the executive assistant. And, um,

• 2:01:54Speaker 03

  you know, the, the bottom line was the White House didn't care if there were weapons of mass destruction. That, that was a lovely fig leaf to have. But whether there were or there weren't, the invasion was going forward. You know, I say in my, in my first book, on my first day as the executive assistant, I went into the office. I had just gotten back from Pakistan. So I went into the office and I said to the deputy director, I go, so, what are we doing? And he says, I actually can't tell you until you sign your secrecy agreement. So I go down to the sixth floor, security's got some agreements for you to sign. So I went down there and I walked in, they had six secrecy agreements laid out for me.

• 2:02:39Speaker 03

  And I signed each one of the six. And I said, so, what's up? And the guy goes, well,

• 2:02:49Speaker 03

  next year, we're going to invade Iraq. We're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

• 2:02:57Speaker 03

  And we're going to create the world's largest air force base. So that we can move all of our air assets out of Saudi Arabia and deprive Osama bin Laden of the ability to say that we were polluting the land of the two holy mosques. And I was so stunned.

• 2:03:17Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. I've never heard that before.

• 2:03:20Speaker 03

  We haven't, we haven't, oh, yeah. I said, but we haven't caught bin Laden yet. And he said, buddy, the battle lines have already been drawn and the decision's been made. He said, the pro-invasion groups are OVP, Office of the Vice President, OSD, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and NSC. He said, the anti-invasion are State Department, CIA, and Joint Chiefs. But we don't get to make those decisions.

• 2:03:52Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:03:53Jack Murphy?

  I, I, I have, I have to say, John, I, just to interrupt for a moment, I mean, I, I have heard it over and over again from CIA people, uh, to the point that there's no way that I could ever believe that all of them are lying to me. That this was a political decision that was made at the White House level, and it was mandated and pushed down to all of the subsequent organizations that you mentioned.

• 2:04:22Speaker 03

  That is 100% correct.

• 2:04:27Speaker 03

  That, this was a decision made by Dick Cheney and imposed on everybody in the community.

• 2:04:35Speaker 04

  That, and, and what did, so was Dick Cheney pushing it down? And then info was getting pushed to Bush to just, because Bush seems like an unwilling.

• 2:04:47Speaker 03

  That, that was a big controversy. That was a big controversy because the CIA is sending these intelligence reports to, to not just the White House, but to the whole community saying, we can't find any weapons of mass destruction. And so what Cheney did was he mandated the creation of an intelligence uh, unit inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense. And they recruited the military guy by the name of Ahkellaby.

• 2:05:17Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:05:18Speaker 03

  And his minions to just manufacture false intelligence, saying, there's WMD all over Iraq, and the only thing we can do to stop it is to invade the country. And then we're like, we're not seeing any of this intel. Where is this stuff coming from? We want to talk to these sources. We want to pop graph these sources. Nope, not available. And so the decision was made. There was nothing anybody could do about it.

• 2:05:44Speaker 04

  So was Iraq a real estate deal facilitated by Cheney to, to basically put the world's largest air force base in there? And deny them, you know, uh, to deny the Saudis?

• 2:05:58Speaker 03

  I, I believe that was it. I think that there is some truth to the desire for revenge against Saddam for trying to kill George H. W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993.

• 2:06:11Speaker 03

  And, and certainly the Israelis were begging us to overthrow Saddam Hussein. At every opportunity, in every meeting in Washington, they would beg us to attack Iraq, just like they've been begging us to attack Iran for the last 20 years.

• 2:06:26Speaker 04

  And what, what, um, what boggles my like imagination though, is that Iraq was our, our foil. We, we armed them, we funded, they were our foil to Iran. And nobody ever sat down and said, what are the second order and third order effects of taking out Saddam?

• 2:06:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, anybody who's ever read a newspaper would be able to say, look, you know, Iraq is the only thing that protects the Arabian Peninsula from the Iranians. Right? We don't have to be friends with Saddam Hussein. We just need for there to be, you know, I hate to sound like a fascist, but we, we needed from a policy perspective for there to be a Sunni strong man running the country. You know, democracy, yes. Uh, equal rights for all ethnic minorities or ethnic groups, definitely. But you can't have an Iraqi government that is subservient to Tehran. And that's what we ended up with. And it was because the policy was a terrible policy.

• 2:07:32Speaker 00

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• 2:08:03Jack Murphy?

  So, John, uh, speeding forward to your, you know, after you were released from prison, uh, I have to ask you about your association with the Russian media and Sputnik News or radio.

• 2:08:20Jack Murphy?

  How, how did that come about? What was your thought process behind it? Um, how, how did all of that kind of unfurl?

• 2:08:29Speaker 03

  Well, in, in March of 2017, I got a, I got a call from the Washington Bureau Chief of Sputnik News. And, um, he says, hey, we, uh, we'd be interested in talking to you about a radio show. And I said, oh, thanks. I'm not interested. Uh, but I appreciate the, the, uh, offer. Oh, well, at least take a meeting. So I went, I took a meeting and I said, ah, again, I appreciate, you know, what you're, what you're offering, but I'm not interested in working for the Russian government. And then, um, I still couldn't find a job.

• 2:09:08Speaker 03

  And they came back to me six months later and they said, hey, you know, we thought we'd try again. We'd like to offer you your own show. And I said, well, if I were to do a show on a Russian network, I would want the freedom to say anything I want and to criticize anybody I wanted, including Vladimir Putin. And the guy said, done. And I said, yeah, you willing to put that in writing? You put it in the contract? And he said, yes. And he did. And so I took the job. I did it from August of 2017 until last month.

• 2:09:51Speaker 03

  And then the Biden administration forced them out of business with, with sanctions. But I'll tell you, on the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I opened my show by saying, I unreservedly condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I urge all Russian forces to leave Ukraine immediately. And then we started the show. And I never, nobody ever objected, nobody ever said anything or dressed me down or, or anything. They were very good to me. And, um, and I was able to, to say anything I wanted for all those years, seven years.

• 2:10:28Jack Murphy?

  What, what did you say through those seven years? I mean, I mean, you, you spoke to your criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, but beyond that, what was the content of those shows?

• 2:10:38Speaker 03

  It was, it was a combination of, of US politics and international affairs. So, you know, we would cover in ridiculous detail, just because I'm obsessed with politics, we would cover American politics. I did a lot on criminal justice issues. In fact, get this, this still pisses me off after all these years. Um, I, I did a 30 minute segment every Thursday called Criminal Injustice. And I had two people, one was a criminal justice journalist, and the other was the head of a, of a, uh, think tank that works on criminal justice issues. And every Thursday, we would talk for 30 minutes about what has happened in the area of criminal justice around

• 2:11:23Speaker 03

  the country. Crooked cops, crooked judges, you know, death penalty cases being overturned because the poor guy was innocent, that kind of thing. So one day, we're talking about this judge in Pennsylvania, you might remember this case, who had taken bribes from a private prison company to give juvenile

• 2:11:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:42Speaker 03

  long sentences. And he would take a kickback. So, we're talking about this. The next day, The Washington Post has an article about, you know, Russian propaganda that is alive and well in the United States. And they said that they had listened to my show, and that I was, and this is the exact quote from the article, "I was weakening our democracy by talking about these issues." Okay, not the crooked judge was weakening our democracy.

• 2:12:09Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:12:11Speaker 03

  "I was weakening our democracy, that we should not be talking about these issues."

• 2:12:17Speaker 03

  And I was like, man, these people just don't get it. These mainstream people, they just don't get it.

• 2:12:23Jack Murphy?

  This, this is a difficult topic, because I think the Russian government recruits people, you know, like, like you, that have some legitimate, or, I mean, it's a question of perception, have some grievances with the United States government, and

• 2:12:40Speaker 03

  Oftentimes

• 2:12:41Jack Murphy?

  allows them and, and promotes them to criticize the United States government. And of course, I, I completely agree that there is a space, and it's important to criticize our government. And many of the ones you've brought up during this interview are completely valid and important.

• 2:13:00Jack Murphy?

  But is there an issue where you're working with the Russian government, where their goal is explicitly to harm the United States of America?

• 2:13:15Speaker 03

  I can see how a lot of people would come to that conclusion. I concede that. But at the same time, uh, I'm not welcome on CNN, or on MSNBC. I'm welcome on Fox every time they want me to criticize the CIA. But, uh, you know, nobody was beating a path to my door to offer me gainful employment. And I have kids to put through college. I put food on the table. So, you know, I, I had to think about what was best for me. And I, I think that's what I did.

• 2:13:46Speaker 04

  Here's the thing, if you're telling the truth, and that truth helps the bad guys, that's a problem for the United States, not for, like, that's an issue if what is truly happening in the United States is valid propaganda.

• 2:14:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:02Speaker 04

  Right? That, that is an issue.

• 2:14:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:04Speaker 04

  If, if, if the, the Chinese, or the Russians, or the Iranians were to hire you, and all you do is tell the truth about real things that are happening in America, those things are real, that's an issue that America should look at and deal with. Why do we,

• 2:14:22Jack Murphy?

  That's true.

• 2:14:22Speaker 04

  Why do we have these factual things that are propaganda victories for our enemies? If there is a judge, and there was, if there is a judge who is doing this, and we have this private prison system, and he is, he is abusing children, right? He is abusing children to make money, and to make these prisons money. And, and, and an enemy of our country can hire somebody to say that, to report the truth, that's our problem. That is not the person who reports the truth.

• 2:14:57Speaker 03

  That's, that's exactly how I felt. And, you know, people ask me, you know, how could you work for the Russians? Well, you know, I, I wish I didn't work for the Russians, or I hadn't, I, I wish I hadn't worked for the Russians.

• 2:15:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:15:09Speaker 03

  I would love to have my own show on, you know, name a network. But that, that just wasn't real life.

• 2:15:17Speaker 04

  And, and the other problem is, is that on many of these mainstream networks, they, they don't, they don't, like, they're, they're very much a part of the system, right? They don't want you reporting on a judge who is sending kids to jail to make money for both him and the jails. They, they're, they're, they want to talk politics, they want to talk, you know, whether it's left or right, you know, um, well, I'm just, I'm very angry right now. Like,

• 2:15:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, no, but you're not wrong.

• 2:15:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, it, it's, it's, anything that, if somebody tells the truth, and it's a benefit to our enemy, that's our problem. That's not the enemy, that's not the person who tells the truth, that's our problem.

• 2:16:01Speaker 03

  Hundred percent agree. Yep. Agree a hundred percent.

• 2:16:05Speaker 04

  You know, it's, um, so, when, uh, and that, it's another thing that I have, a big issue I have is prison reform. If somebody does their time, they've done their time. Unless they're a threat to other people, if they're like a child molester, or a rapist, or whatever else, where they might be a threat to, to people. If, if you have a felony, and you've done your time, you're, you've done your time, you should never have to reveal that to anybody, answer to anybody, that's it.

• 2:16:32Speaker 03

  Clean slate.

• 2:16:33Speaker 04

  Exactly. Exactly. Uh, you shouldn't have to pay for the rest of your life, because that's what, that's what the jail sentence was, that's what the prison sentence was.

• 2:16:43Jack Murphy?

  And that's why we're happy to talk to you on this show, John, because, I mean, we get, we can relitigate this ad nauseam, but the reality is, you were sentenced, and you served your debt to society, and now you're out, and you should have the opportunity to reintegrate into society. Um, but, so you, you said that your relationship with Sputnik ended about like a month ago? I mean, tell us about where you, tell us about where you're at now. Um, you're said, you said you're working on another book? I mean, where, where is John Kiriakou at today?

• 2:17:18Speaker 03

  John Kiriakou has turned into an entrepreneur, I'll say. Um, so I, I'm trying to cast a wide net. Like I say, you know, nobody's beaten a path to my door, so I have to make my own way. Plus, the fact that the government confiscated my pension, and I had 20 years of proud government service. So I gotta work till the day I die, unless, you know, some president at some point deems to, uh, to give me a pardon. So, um, so I, I have a column, as I said, with Consortium News, I have a column with Covert Action Magazine.

• 2:17:56Speaker 03

  I'm in the process of, of developing, um, a podcast with my, two of my former colleagues from Sputnik. Uh, one is a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist. And, um, I'm on the board of a, of a tech startup that's actually turning into something. We have 27 employees now, and, and those shares that I thought were worthless are actually turning into something. And, um, and books. I, I tell you the truth, I have a lot of trouble sleeping. And so, I'll just get up in the middle of the night and, and bang out a thousand words. I'm working on my ninth book. My eighth book was something completely different. I

• 2:18:40Speaker 03

  called my publisher, and I said, I said, "Listen, I, I wrote a, a book, and I know that you don't really do things like this, but it's called, uh, Remains of the Day, The Ultimate Guide to Washington DC's Historic Cemeteries." And he's like, "Ooh, yeah, we don't really do that, but go ahead and send it to me, and, and I'll read it." So I sent it to him. He calls me two weeks later, he said, "This is the best book you've ever written."

• 2:19:10Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:19:10Speaker 03

  In fact, he said, "The editorial board liked it so much, they want to commission three more. The Mafia Graves of New York City, The Historic Cemeteries of Chicago, and The Country Western Graves of Nashville."

• 2:19:23Speaker 04

  Oh, that's cool.

• 2:19:24Speaker 03

  So, I got started on that. And, um, yeah, we'll just see what it turns into.

• 2:19:33Jack Murphy?

  Where can people find you, whether on social media?

• 2:19:36Speaker 04

  Or websites or go to buy your books. Uh, what is the right place for people to go?

• 2:19:42Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you for that. The best place is Substack. Everything I write, I put on Substack and it's just under John Kiriakou. Um, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter and um, uh, what else? Uh, oh, yeah, you know what? I've got a new TV show. It's an internet-based show uh, at a place called Unified Uh, Television, U N I F Y D. It's called CIA Declassified. And uh, what we do is we take declassified CIA documents and use them to explain historical events like the Berlin uh airlift or the overthrow of the Iranian government or, you know, the Chile uh coup in 1973.

• 2:20:25Speaker 03

  Um, the Kennedy assassination, stuff like that. Um, but everything, everything goes on Substack. That's probably the best place to find me.

• 2:20:34Speaker 04

  Cool. That sounds really cool though, uh, especially with the foyer reading, like the foyer reading room is like Wikipedia. I like, you can just go down so many rabbit holes there. It's incredible.

• 2:20:43Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh. I, I love it. I do it myself.

• 2:20:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:48Speaker 03

  Uh, you start reading about air America and the next thing you know, you're, you know, getting a PhD in the subject.

• 2:20:53Speaker 04

  Well, here's an interesting uh, fact for the uh, like Stargate and all that stuff. Did you know that there were uh, remote viewers for Eagle Claw?

• 2:21:02Speaker 03

  Yes. You know, it's funny. We did an episode about that.

• 2:21:05Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:21:06Speaker 03

  Oh, cool. And, and I, I didn't, when, when it was suggested to me, I said, oh, come on, all that stuff is, it's all silliness and nonsense. And then I started reading the documents and I thought, oh crap, no, I was wrong about this.

• 2:21:19Speaker 04

  It's wild. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. I spent like days going through down, down that.

• 2:21:24Speaker 03

  Oh my God. And MKUltra, you know, there were, there were like five sub operations under MKUltra.

• 2:21:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:31Speaker 03

  Like how this stuff happened in the United States of America.

• 2:21:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:35Jack Murphy?

  It's crazy.

• 2:21:36Speaker 03

  It's stunning to me.

• 2:21:37Speaker 04

  And, and what's wild, we only know about MKUltra because of testimonies and because they found stuff in, you know, in some remote location that had been like forgotten about, but they burned it. We don't even know. We don't know like nine tenths of what MKUltra was about.

• 2:21:53Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. You're, you're absolutely right. Like what about this part of MKUltra where they decided to um, to use fog machines to uh, to disperse germs in San Francisco to see who got sick. And 11 people came down with this rare form of uh, of UTI. And they're like, oh, okay, that works.

• 2:22:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. No, it's fascinating. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. Um, I, I could geek out about that stuff for hours. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna put on my game face here and get to viewer questions. Um, Sully, thank you very much. Looking back, what would you do differently regards working in the CIA slash whistleblowing? Does the CIA do more good than bad in the world?

• 2:22:42Speaker 03

  That's a tough one. Uh, the, the easy part of that question is, I'll tell you exactly what I would do differently, and that is hire an attorney before you blow the whistle. I cannot say that any more clearly. Don't say anything until your attorney is sitting next to you. I hired my attorney after blowing the whistle and I had to be reactive instead of proactive. Um, does the CIA do more bad than good? I, unfortunately, I think yes. And I've got a really great friend. He's probably my best friend, who's a former Deputy Attorney General of the United States. And, and we've been talking about a book on that issue specifically. And his position is that the CIA has gotten literally every major world event wrong

• 2:23:27Speaker 03

  since it was created in 1947. It missed everything from the Berlin airlift, uh, or the Berlin, the creation of the Berlin Wall to the Suez Crisis, to everything during the Vietnam War, all the way up, you know, through nine 11. They just get everything wrong. And then they get tangled up in things like MKUltra or Iran-Contra. Uh, and then fall flat on their faces on nine 11. Do we really need this organization? I think probably not.

• 2:23:58Speaker 04

  I, I'll have, I have a question in this turn, in the sense of, because you worked it, you were good at it. You had friends who did it. It seems to me, and you know, having all the interviews that we had, that at the micro level, at the case officer agent uh, analysis level, they do a very good job. You guys do phenomenal work and they're some of America's some of America's most talented. It seems that where a lot of the failures come in is when you start getting up into policy and to sit like, like um, the management uh, issues and not pointing the finger that like just generic SIS people, but at actual like

• 2:24:42Speaker 04

  leadership at, at the higher level. Would, would you, is that accurate in your opinion or no?

• 2:24:47Speaker 03

  Absolutely accurate. Absolutely. You know, once you, once you pollute intelligence with politics, uh, or once you mix intelligence with policy, it all just goes down the drain. And then you have all those smart people working for, for, you know, a needless war or a failed policy or a mistake.

• 2:25:13Speaker 04

  Um, Safi, uh, Sully, thank you very much. What would you say to those responsible for sending you to prison? Do you hate them?

• 2:25:21Speaker 03

  Oh, you know, that's, that's a, that's a good question too. And I'm proud to say the answer is no. Um, I, I really do view it as, as water under the bridge. It, I, like Muhammad Utslahe said, I, I would only harm myself if, if I focused on it. And so, you know, like I said, I, I like the person that I am. And my children respect me. And they know the truth of what happens. My ex-wife was right. My side of the story is the side of record. And so I'm, I'm comfortable with all of that.

• 2:25:57Speaker 04

  What, what's your opinion in terms of, you know, Trump had classified documents at his house. Biden had classified documents at his house. Hillary, you know, removed the headers, the classified headers from, you know, or, from stuff. Um, stuff that any of us would go to jail for. Like, what do you think is the answer to these double standards that we have? And it's like Jack mentioned earlier, if you have enough stars or high enough SIS level, you can say whatever you want and you're not going to jail. Like, what do you think the answer to that is?

• 2:26:29Speaker 03

  It's called prosecutorial discretion. Um, I think the answer is that the, that the Espionage Act has to be scrapped in its current form and it has to be rewritten. Um, because the Espionage Act says nothing about any affirmative defense or about remote intent. If you, if you had the intent to provide classified information to a person not entitled to receive it, you should be prosecuted. If you did not have an intent, or if you did it for legitimate legal reasons,

• 2:27:09Speaker 03

  or if there was no provable harm to the national security, you should not be prosecuted. And another thing that I think should, should be in parallel with this is according to George W. Bush's classifications are

• 2:27:27Speaker 03

  something like 75% of classified documents are improperly classified. They should not be classified. We overclassify everything in government. And so, you know, if I send my wife an, an email saying, hey, do you want to meet, meet for lunch? And it's classified secret because everything at the CIA is classified secret at a minimum. And then she says, yeah, let's meet at noon. I'll meet you in front of the, you know, deli. And she classifies that secret. And then I call my sister and say, oh, hey, my wife and I had lunch uh, at the deli in the CIA cafeteria today. Have I committed espionage? Those documents were classified.

• 2:28:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:28:10Speaker 03

  So, you know,

• 2:28:14Speaker 03

  there, there's gotta be, there's gotta be a limit. There's gotta be an end.

• 2:28:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:28:18Speaker 03

  And there's no end. It's unwieldy. It's out of control.

• 2:28:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:28:21Speaker 03

  And it's abused by, by senior officials.

• 2:28:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:28:23Jack Murphy?

  Certainly needs to be updated since pre-World War I.

• 2:28:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they, they've done the mandatory declassification. Uh, I, I don't know what that act is. But where they have to look at it every 10 years, at least that's a step in the right direction. But, but they

• 2:28:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, but then they don't staff those offices.

• 2:28:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:28:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wrote an op, I wrote an op that a year ago or so about um, declassification at the National Archives. Did you know that, that there's a queue to declassify documents at National Archives? That's 600 years long?

• 2:28:56Speaker 04

  That's insane.

• 2:28:57Speaker 03

  That at the current pace, yeah, at the current pace, it's going to take them 600 years to declassify the classified documents.

• 2:29:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:05Speaker 03

  So it's great that we have these laws for mandatory declassification, but then

• 2:29:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:29:10Speaker 03

  you have to actually staff the offices where they're going to do the reading and, and do the redactions.

• 2:29:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:16Speaker 03

  And they don't bother.

• 2:29:16Speaker 04

  And, and now, now so many of our federal agencies are, are using classification. Just not because it's a matter of national security. It's just because they don't want to release things that are embarrassing. You know, they'll redact.

• 2:29:28Jack Murphy?

  It's political.

• 2:29:29Speaker 04

  They'll redact stuff just so they don't get embarrassed. It's like, that's not classified.

• 2:29:34Speaker 03

  I was talking to one of the guys at the National Security Archives. Um, that's the repository at George Washington University that gets all these classified documents. And I said, you know, Trump promised in 16 and Biden promised in 20 that they would, they would release all of the remaining JFK assassination documents. And both of them didn't, you know, they neglected to do it. They decided not to do it. And I said, I said, what do you think is in those documents? I said, I'm gonna guess that it's information on surveillance activities in Mexico City in 1963.

• 2:30:11Jack Murphy?

  I, I, I think.

• 2:30:12Speaker 03

  He said, yeah, he said, I think that's exactly what it is. And I said, so the big secret is that the CIA was surveilling communists in Mexico City in 1963. Who cares?

• 2:30:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:30:29Speaker 03

  Who cares what they were doing?

• 2:30:31Speaker 04

  They, they, the FBI was surveilling like college professors in 1965. Like we know, we, we know. Um, yeah, okay. Um, what was, what was, thank you, Sully. Appreciate. What was the best thing about being in the CIA? And if your kids want to join the CIA, would you object?

• 2:30:55Speaker 03

  Um,

• 2:30:58Speaker 03

  would I object?

• 2:31:04Speaker 03

  Probably, yeah. I probably would, because I know, I know what these people are like. And, and they're, they're, they're sociopaths. The whole organization is made up of sociopaths. That's how people rise to the top, on the backs of everybody else. And they would just as soon kill you as shake your hand. So, yeah, I, I, I would not want my children to, uh, to join the CIA.

• 2:31:31Speaker 04

  Do you, do you think that that is part of, uh, I, I don't want to say sociopaths, having sociopathic tendencies, because guys in SOF have them too. But the difference between special operations and the CIA, in special operations, you have to be good at working in a team. Like, you have to be able to get along. In the CIA, you have to be able to recruit, but it is a very individual effort. And sometimes it's a very competitive effort because of that individualism. Do you think that the people who are selected are selected for those qualities? Or do you think that the people who succeed succeed because they have those qualities?

• 2:32:13Speaker 03

  I think, I think both, uh, uh, points are true. Um, the, the problem with, you know, the CIA, as you just said a moment ago, correctly. Um, the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies. Not sociopaths, because sociopaths are impossible to control.

• 2:32:31Speaker 04

  And, and special operations have, special operations have, has that same thing, you know?

• 2:32:36Jack Murphy?

  People who are psychopaths are like literally incapable of like integrating into these.

• 2:32:42Speaker 04

  Right, but you have to have an ability to attach a certain amount in these types of jobs.

• 2:32:47Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right. But just as you would see in any Fortune 500 company, there are going to be sociopaths who slip through the process and who rise to the top. Because it's the sociopaths who rise to the top. You know, that's just, that's just a fact of, of corporate life. It, it's not unique to the CIA in any way.

• 2:33:09Speaker 04

  Right, right. Because they're, they don't have boundaries. Yeah, exactly. Um, Sully, thank you very much. Would Jack and Dave have been whistleblowers if they knew what John did? Is there a big stigma from, uh, the Rangers, Green Berets towards whistleblowers?

• 2:33:27Jack Murphy?

  There's a huge stigma. And I, I, I wrote about in my own book about the JSOC, Black Site in Mosul. And, you know, some of the contractors that worked there encouraged us to torture prisoners. And, you know, I, I told the privates in my squad, like, absolutely not, you should not be participating in that. That's not your job. This was post Abu Ghraib too. I was like, hell no, absolutely, you should not be participating in that.

• 2:33:55Speaker 04

  Do, uh, do you think that in?

• 2:33:59Jack Murphy?

  But I didn't blow the whistle.

• 2:34:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I think that being a whistleblower, I think it, I think it really depends on, uh, like, it takes a lot of courage to be a whistleblower. And, uh, especially when you're part of a group of people and an organization that you love. Uh, because, because you were not, you know, e- even if it's not you or anybody that, that you do know and love, this participating in this thing, you know, um, it's, um, you're giving up a lot when you do that. And so I think for me, like in your situation,

• 2:34:43Speaker 04

  you know, because it was sort of after the fact, you had already left the agency. You didn't, you didn't like technically like blow the whistle while you were there and, and whatnot. Like you actually, you went on with good faith to defend yourself, not, you know, you got caught up in, in the thing, well, not Jack, because he's media savvy. But me or anybody else like me, you know, would do is I'm just here to speak my truth. And all of a sudden, it's like, um, but to actually blow the whistle on something going on, um, I, it really depends for me what it would be that was going on, how heinous it was, how widespread it was. It, it's, I don't know if I have that much courage, to be honest with you.

• 2:35:28Speaker 04

  I, I really don't. It's, it's a tough situation.

• 2:35:31Speaker 03

  The cost is great. The cost is great.

• 2:35:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and again, it's not just the personal cost, uh, in terms of like, uh, can I say something? It's about being completely alienated from your community.

• 2:35:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:35:44Speaker 04

  So, um, yeah, I don't know. That's a good question, Sully. Thanks. Um, I, I'll just say that the whistleblowers and, and have a lot of courage. Um, Sully, uh, thank you. Unfortunately paid comments I put in yesterday's period, so I have to read them. I'm sorry, man. Sorry about that. Uh, Sully, uh, what would you say to those responsible for sending you to prison? Oh, no, we already got, we already asked that. Oh, I guess your questions did show up, man. Okay, um, so I guess they didn't show up in the live chat, but they were, but they were sitting there.

• 2:36:23Speaker 04

  Default Name, thank you very much. You've talked about how driving was your favorite part of training. What part of that training do you continue to use in daily situations?

• 2:36:33Speaker 03

  Oh, driving every single day.

• 2:36:41Speaker 03

  Everybody that drives with me complains that I drive like a crazy person. I like to think that I drive like a very self-aware defensive driver.

• 2:36:54Speaker 04

  John, how many people on, on average would you say you pit a day?

• 2:37:00Speaker 03

  Oh my God, that was like the funnest part of the funnest course was pitting. I never heard of it until they, they told us, you know, how to do it.

• 2:37:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:37:11Speaker 03

  But, oh man. And I always wondered, so why does the car just sort of shut itself off when you pit it? I don't know. And then the blinkers come on automatically. Who designed that?

• 2:37:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, for people who might not know, pitting is the move you see on every movie where the car behind comes up and hits the car on, you know, the car in front on the side and causes them to spin out. But there's a very specific technique to do that, and you have to know the technique. And if you want to learn that technique, join the CIA and go through their driving course.

• 2:37:44Speaker 04

  Or probably search YouTube. Um, yeah. Um, you know, you mentioned like the weapons handling and, you know, and a lot of things that I don't know that the farm does that for, like, because it goes through these phases, right? Where sometimes it's, um, a, a special operations, uh, or what, or a, a military, paramilitary module that's automatic. Or sometimes people have to go back for with the guns and, you know, and the driving. That's not always like part of the standard farm experience. Is that correct?

• 2:38:20Speaker 03

  That's right. That's right. Those, many of those classes are done as sort of special, special runnings, depending on where you're going. Like, if you're going to go to Brussels, for example, you're not going to get the driving courses.

• 2:38:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:38:31Speaker 03

  But if you're going to go to, you know, Kinshasa or, you know, anywhere in the Middle East, pretty much, you're going to get it.

• 2:38:40Speaker 04

  So did you go to those extra modules because you were going to Pakistan?

• 2:38:44Speaker 03

  No, I got them because I was going to Athens.

• 2:38:48Speaker 04

  Oh, Athens. Oh, that's right. That's right. I'm sorry about that.

• 2:38:51Speaker 03

  We spent more money on security in Athens than we spent anywhere in the world at that time. That's how dangerous 17 November was.

• 2:39:02Speaker 04

  That's fas- that's fascinating. And it's fascinating what you said about MI6 too, or, or about the Brits. Because when I was in Iraq, I met a guy from MI6 and he was not allowed by British law to carry a weapon in Iraq.

• 2:39:14Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:39:15Speaker 04

  It, it was insane.

• 2:39:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's insane. I carried a nine millimeter on my waist, a 38 on my ankle, and I had three extra magazines in a tearaway fanny pack. And we always, all of us used to say, if, if they're going to take us down, we're taking as many of them as we can with us.

• 2:39:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, Road Beef, thank you very much for the very generous donation. Uh, if possible, let me read this before I say it, because, okay. Uh, if possible, I would love to hear John's thoughts as to what distinguishes him from other famous whistleblowers like Assange or Snowden. Maybe it's a question of moral motivators versus notoriety motivators. Uh, curious your view.

• 2:40:03Speaker 03

  Um, that's kind of a tough one. Um, well, Snowden's the easier example of the two. I think, I think what Snowden revealed was absolutely heroic. We would have no idea that our government was spying on us had he not told us. You know, this is a violation of US law. It's a violation of the NSA Charter and they don't care. And we wouldn't have any idea had Snowden not said something. Julian is a, is a tougher, Julian's a tougher case. You know, I, I'm on record as being a strong supporter of Julian Assange's.

• 2:40:42Speaker 03

  Julian's very difficult to get along with, but personalities aside, uh, he revealed crimes. Right? He revealed war crimes being committed in Iraq. He revealed crimes having been committed by Hillary Clinton. And, you know, the Democrats can jump up and down all they want and say that it was Julian Assange that gave us Trump. No, it was Hillary Clinton that gave us Donald Trump. You can't blame Julian Assange because he told the truth. So, you know, it's, it's like comparing apples and oranges, really. It's tough, it's tough to put whistleblowers side by side because each situation is so unique and uniquely different.

• 2:41:26Speaker 03

  I will say that among national security whistleblowers, we're all friends, right? We all stay in touch and, you know, the case of people like Tom Drake from NSA and Jeffrey Sterling and Bill Binney and Kirk Weeby and Jesslyn Radak. We're all pals and we have dinner together and we do stuff together. Um, that's unusual among whistleblowers, but...

• 2:41:53Jack Murphy?

  Isn't there something to be said here that, you know, for, for sure, Ed Snowden blew the whistle on something about metadata that there are very legitimate concerns about this information being collected on American citizens. But he also divulged a ton of classified and special access programs to the Russians and Chinese.

• 2:42:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, that, I, I have to agree with you. Um, just like, you know, there were elements of Vault 7 that should have remained classified and compartmentalized. You know, I want my country's intelligence service to be looking at the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans at all in a very highly technical fashion.

• 2:42:43Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:42:43Speaker 03

  I want them, I want them to be able to do something like that. You know, somebody said to me, I, I gave a speech, I gave a speech in, oh, in Berlin. And somebody said, oh my God, did you see that the CIA was intercepting Angela Merkel's cellphone? And I said...

• 2:43:00Jack Murphy?

  That's their job.

• 2:43:01Speaker 03

  That's what I want the CIA to be doing. I want them to intercept Angela Merkel's cellphone.

• 2:43:07Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:43:08Speaker 03

  Right? We shouldn't be talking about that stuff. So, yeah, you have legitimate concerns there.

• 2:43:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, to piggyback with Jack, like, for me, I see Snowden as a traitor. And the reason I see that is because of how and why and what he released. As opposed to like focusing on one thing and going like this, they're collecting this metadata and going through the whistleblower channels.

• 2:43:38Speaker 03

  Right, right. Which he did not do, like Tom Drake did.

• 2:43:41Speaker 04

  Right. Instead of going through the whistleblower channels. And then when he couldn't, like, if he couldn't get the whistleblower channels or if he was facing repercussions, to then go to the media or whatever. But to just take, to just take a thumb drive of everything classified that I can. To me, that's, that's not whistleblowing, that's just being a traitor. And Assange, to me, he's just in his, you know, I don't think of him as a journalist, but he's not the person with the access. If he's, you know what I'm saying? If he's a guy, like, plenty of people who work for the New York Times, the WaPo, you know, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, whatever,

• 2:44:22Speaker 04

  they've had people from the government tell them things and they've written articles about it. That's what Assange does, only en masse, right? In a way. So, to me...

• 2:44:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's a publisher.

• 2:44:34Speaker 04

  He should have the exact same immunity that, it's not his fault, people, you know, that people, that people give him information.

• 2:44:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, well, he, he can't be prosecuted for it. Uh, the, the, his sources could potentially be prosecuted.

• 2:44:48Speaker 04

  Exactly, 100%, you know. Like, journalists should have immunity from what, you know, people give them. That's freedom of speech and we should respect that. And people should keep their mouth shut unless it's, unless it's, it's a legitimate whistleblower situation where our government is committing crimes or abusing its power.

• 2:45:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, agreed.

• 2:45:10Speaker 04

  Just, um, let's see here, um, Chief Justice Keith, thank you very much. John, I love your work. Just wondering what happened to the VODs, the video on demand, or saved live streams of political misfits? Also, what's the coolest souvenir or thing of sentiment from your time in the service?

• 2:45:32Speaker 03

  That's a great question. Um, you know, I'm sorry to say that, um, that with sanctions against Russian media, every social media platform, YouTube, Spreaker, Spotify, iTunes, everybody just deleted all of our shows. They're just, they're gone forever. I hate to say it. That's, yeah, that's...

• 2:45:53Speaker 04

  Out of curiosity, how do the, how do the sanctions, um, how do the sanctions pair with the First Amendment?

• 2:46:04Speaker 03

  I know, right? So, they did this in a very, very smart way. They never really sanctioned us. What they did is they sanctioned the Russian banks where we had our checking accounts. And so, the act of receiving a paycheck was now, or is now considered to be money laundering. So, there's just no way, we can, we can have the show, you know, every day if we want, but we can't get paid for it.

• 2:46:31Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, would you guys restart the show on your own independently on YouTube?

• 2:46:40Speaker 03

  Not that show, no. It, it's time to move on from the Russians.

• 2:46:45Speaker 04

  No, no, I don't, I don't mean the Russians. I, I don't, I don't mean anything to do with the Russians. I mean, you and the people who were on political misfits. Like, you guys doing your own show on YouTube sponsored by you, like we do this show. Um, yeah, you know, that you have an audience, right?

• 2:47:02Speaker 03

  In fact, we, we had a meeting about it today. We, we hope to have something up and running in the next couple of weeks. Yeah. And in terms of my, my favorite souvenir, um, I recruited a guy. I recruited a guy who, man, I have to be careful.

• 2:47:21Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, a guy in a country somewhere at some time.

• 2:47:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I recruited this guy in Eastern Europe. And, and he turned out to be the real deal. And I recruited him after two different station chiefs told me not to waste my time. And I did it and he gave me the, the golden goose. And so, when I left, he gave me an antique dagger. And he said, in his culture, when, when men were close, like brothers, they exchanged daggers. And he wanted to give me this dagger. I actually gave him a Rolex. I didn't know anything about this dagger thing.

• 2:48:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:48:05Speaker 03

  But, but I treasure that dagger. It's in my nightstand. It's, it's in a leather sheath. It's got to be at least 100 years old. And, uh, it's probably not worth anything, but I love it.

• 2:48:19Speaker 04

  That's awesome. Um, M. Corbin, thank you very much for the very generous donation. What changes, if any, would you make to the current operations of the CIA in analyzing the adversary landscape facing the nation? Um, and also, how do you avoid stepping on your massive, um, manhood in the morning when getting out of the bed?

• 2:48:47Speaker 03

  Thank you for that. Um, you know, I've written a couple of times about US-Russian relations. And, um, yeah, I, I was always a Middle East guy. I, I don't know anything about Russia. I don't really care about Russia. I'm not really interested in Russia. But having been at the agency for as long as I was and then on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff after that, um, I, I at least developed a couple of opinions. And what I would change about the agency is that the agency blindly follows whoever happens to be at the White House at a micro level, and they shouldn't.

• 2:49:30Speaker 03

  I've always maintained that even in a time of war, the CIA and the various Russian intelligence services could still cooperate on intelligence sharing if they wanted to in three very specific areas. Counterterrorism, counter-narcotics, and counterproliferation. Um, there's no reason why we shouldn't be exchanging information on those areas because they're threats to both of our countries. And we both have sources that we could use to trade the information. And we don't. You know, the Russians are bad or the Americans are bad. And so, nothing gets traded.

• 2:50:18Speaker 04

  Um, RS, thank you very much. Uh, your favorite improvised prison weapon and uh, your favorite dish prepared by the wise guys.

• 2:50:28Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Well, the, the, the boiling olive oil was something I, it's so logical, but I would never have thought of it.

• 2:50:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:50:38Speaker 03

  My, my best friend in prison, you know, you don't go to prison to make friends, right? But I made one friend who's like a brother to me and he, he could make a gourmet Italian meal

• 2:50:54Speaker 03

  with a garbage bucket, a plastic bag, some water and a live electrical wire. And I remember him making, God, this fettuccine Alfredo that had boneless, skinless chicken breast and where he got the basil. Well, I know, but anyway, I said to him, I was eating it. I was sitting on his bunk and I was eating it. And I said, buddy, I would pay $30 for this in an Italian restaurant. You have a gift.

• 2:51:29Speaker 03

  And he, he laughed. I said, no, I'm, I'm serious. You have a gift. And then the next day it would be, you know, he made Stromboli's one time. I was like, where'd you get all this stuff? Fresh dough in a prison?

• 2:51:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:51:45Speaker 03

  Thirty-five pounds, man. I gained thirty-five pounds and I enjoyed every bite of it.

• 2:51:53Speaker 04

  Are, are, in your experience, because I know you weren't in a maximum security, but are, are the prisons just basically, I mean, are they just wide open to corruption?

• 2:52:04Speaker 03

  Oh, boy, are they. And you know, it's, it's the guards that are the corrupt ones. You know, when, when you see a guard backing his pickup truck up to um, the, the commissary and stealing a pallet of Pop-Tarts that he can then, you know, sell on wherever it is he's selling it at the local flea market or whatever, or a pallet of batteries that's worth thousands of dollars, or they use the profits, they're supposed to use the profits from the commissary to buy things like, you know, tennis balls and tennis rackets or softballs or soccer balls or whatever. And instead they, they build a, a guards only gym and then buy, you know,

• 2:52:48Speaker 03

  elliptical machines and treadmills. Yeah, that's corrupt.

• 2:52:53Speaker 04

  And, and is that, was that a, um, was that a for-profit prison or a government-run prison?

• 2:52:59Speaker 03

  It was government-run. The for-profit ones are far worse.

• 2:53:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. It, it's crazy. Criminal and prison reform are two things that our country should, should absolutely be embarrassed about.

• 2:53:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, we should be. Yes, indeed. And you know, the only way to make a profit is to cut costs.

• 2:53:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:53:19Speaker 03

  And the only way you can cut costs is to feed prisoners animal-grade food instead of human-grade food and to not give anybody medication.

• 2:53:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:53:28Speaker 03

  And that's exactly what they do.

• 2:53:30Speaker 04

  Well, the other way to make profit is to make sure more people are imprisoned.

• 2:53:33Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:53:33Speaker 03

  Exactly right.

• 2:53:34Speaker 04

  You know, which our government is, is regardless of what administration, our government is always happy to do.

• 2:53:42Speaker 03

  Exactly right.

• 2:53:43Speaker 04

  I mean, Trump did the first step program, which was at least a step in the right direction, but it needs to go so much further. Um,

• 2:53:53Speaker 04

  uh, Cat, uh, CA, thank you very much. Uh, or this Canadian, I don't know, with no name, Canadian five dollars. Thank you, um, for your foreign money that I don't even know if it works here. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, hey, Team House, once again, thanks for another great episode. Quick question for John. Can we finally see the SpongeBob shirt?

• 2:54:11Speaker 03

  Yes. You know, I, I think it's in, I, I got divorced in 2018 and I packed all my stuff up and much of it is in boxes in my garage, but yes, I will dig out the SpongeBob shirt. Yes, I promise.

• 2:54:27Speaker 04

  We must see it. Um, Andrew Dunbar, thank you very much. Um, how the hell did Free Rando Greece get hooked up with the cross shack? We asked that, I said earlier. Scott G, thank you very much. Um,

• 2:54:41Speaker 04

  what were the weirdest pitches the information peddlers would give to end with you or anyone paying for their info and why?

• 2:54:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I had a, I had a, I had a guy come in to the American Embassy in Athens,

• 2:54:57Speaker 03

  with a totally straight face, tell me that 17 November was being headed by Queen Elizabeth and that the, uh, lead hitman was Jacques Cousteau.

• 2:55:07Speaker 04

  Sounds legit. Sounds legit, man.

• 2:55:10Speaker 03

  And he wanted to be paid on the spot.

• 2:55:13Speaker 04

  I'd pay, I'd pay him. I believe it. I mean, you could have, you could have given him donuts and told him to like $20 bills and like that, that's some.

• 2:55:21Speaker 03

  I was so mad. I was so mad because policy is that you have to write this crap up, no matter how you do it. And I wasted two hours doing this silliness.

• 2:55:31Speaker 04

  That's amazing. Um, uh, uh, Alexander De South, thank you very much. Um, no question, just cheers from Brazil. Come visit us sometimes.

• 2:55:43Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 2:55:46Speaker 04

  Uh, Gabriel Arantes, thank you very much. John, why did Brennan not catch more flack?

• 2:55:51Speaker 03

  Hmm. That's a great question. Um,

• 2:55:58Speaker 03

  man, you know, Brennan, Brennan made a name for himself in a very funny way. Uh, in, there was a, there was a wrath, a raft of, of retirement, senior level retirements in 2008. And just about everybody split down the middle. Half of them went to the McCain campaign and half of them went to the Hillary campaign. And Brennan was literally the only guy that went to the Obama campaign. And then Obama won. And so Brennan set himself up for greatness. He told everybody in Washington who would listen that after he was CIA director, uh, he wanted to be Secretary of Defense. And instead he went to MSNBC and got a $6 million

• 2:56:41Speaker 03

  book advance and, you know, has lived happily ever after. So I think because he was so close to Obama, like he was Obama's, he was the guy in, in the, uh, in the intelligence community for Obama, even before he went to, to the CIA, that he was able to protect himself that way. He made himself invaluable.

• 2:57:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:57:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. And remember Obama had literally zero experience in intelligence. Nothing. He was a senator for two years. He knew nothing about intelligence.

• 2:57:13Speaker 04

  Right. It, it's very interesting. It's, and it's kind of scary in terms of like how uh, the amount of hubris that there is now, uh, in, in all the, in, in the federal, in the FBI and the CIA, or with, not amongst the actual people, but with the leadership and things like that, you know?

• 2:57:36Speaker 03

  Yes. Isn't that the truth?

• 2:57:38Speaker 04

  You know, that, that if you criticize them, you're anti-American and, and things like that.

• 2:57:44Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:57:49Speaker 04

  Andrew Dunbar, thank you very much. Should the government find a way that intelligence community vets who have run afoul of the law don't make similar choices regarding, uh, RT?

• 2:58:05Speaker 04

  I.e. saving pensions, employment. It's not like the CIA doesn't know how to slip some bills.

• 2:58:09Jack Murphy?

  Uh, that's confusing.

• 2:58:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. Should the government find a way that intelligence community vets who have run afoul of the law regarding RT, like RT?

• 2:58:20Speaker 04

  Uh, Andrew, I don't, I'm sorry, man. I don't understand. Do you understand the question?

• 2:58:24Speaker 03

  No, I, I, I think I, I think I get it. If, if you are, if you are convicted of a national security crime, um, you automatically lose your federal pension. And that was an add-on that was done in the early 1980s. So, yeah, I mean, the easy thing is to, is to repeal that. It's just, and, and it's never been challenged. I, I, I'm wondering if it's unconstitutional.

• 2:58:47Speaker 04

  I, I, is this something that you've thought about challenging, finding a good attorney and, and challenging, since you, you have standing?

• 2:58:57Speaker 03

  I do. Well, I don't actually, because when you take a plea,

• 2:59:02Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:59:02Speaker 03

  you have to waive your rights

• 2:59:04Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:59:05Speaker 03

  any future appeal.

• 2:59:07Speaker 04

  And, and when you, so when you take a appeal just for that, or appeal in terms of anything regarding

• 2:59:15Speaker 03

  And not only, not only do you have to waive your right to appeal, you have to waive your right to, to FOIA yourself for the rest of your life.

• 2:59:25Speaker 04

  How is that conscious?

• 2:59:26Speaker 03

  So I'm not

• 2:59:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that's a little weird.

• 2:59:27Speaker 03

  I know, right?

• 2:59:28Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:28Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm not allowed to file a Freedom of Information Act request to see what it was they, you know, were talking about

• 2:59:38Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:38Speaker 03

  about me, or, you know, planning, or I, I'm not allowed to know any of that.

• 2:59:43Speaker 04

  I, I feel like you have standing to take all of that to Supreme Court because, like, because your, your rights are being infringed on.

• 2:59:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Civil, yeah, there's some civil rights issues.

• 2:59:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, it feels like a civil rights issue.

• 2:59:53Jack Murphy?

  But.

• 2:59:54Speaker 04

  Um, M. Corbin, thank you very, oh, uh, let's hear. M. Corbin, thank you very much. Uh, I will send Jack recent audio from William Colby on MKUltra.

• 3:00:05Jack Murphy?

  Thank you.

• 3:00:06Speaker 04

  That sounds awesome. Uh, Proud Masked Gun, um, su, thank you very much. Super interesting, great story. Andrew Dunbar, thank you very much. What is the quality of ad hoc embassy discos in Pakistan as nightlife? Any good with, uh, or with marine guards? There is a kind of a sausage party.

• 3:00:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, actually, it was a sausage party. And, you know, it's one of those

• 3:00:32Speaker 03

  kind of things with, with the, with the Filipino cover band.

• 3:00:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:00:36Speaker 03

  So it was not, not my scene at all.

• 3:00:39Speaker 04

  But let's be honest, Filipino cover bands kick ass.

• 3:00:43Speaker 03

  They're all over the Middle East.

• 3:00:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:00:45Jack Murphy?

  Remember the Vietnam dude that talked about the cover for, uh, was it Submellow?

• 3:00:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:00:53Jack Murphy?

  Like Mellow Submarine?

• 3:00:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but, yeah, yeah. But no, Filipinos are like phenomenal singer, like great cover band.

• 3:01:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, they are.

• 3:01:06Speaker 04

  Um,

• 3:01:08Speaker 04

  I think one of the best blues bands I ever saw was like, was it Bishkek? I don't remember, but like, they were just at a bar called The Golden Bull. It was amazing. Um, uh, Sessar Anomen, thank you very much. I have, uh, educated colleagues who believe the CIA smuggled cocaine and killed the president. Is this not a concern? Poor public trust with concerns of it being exploited by foreign services?

• 3:01:34Speaker 03

  Killed, sorry, killed the president of the United States?

• 3:01:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have educated colleague. Oh, I have, okay. He hasn't. I have educated colleagues who believe the CIA smuggled cocaine and killed the president. Is this not a concern? Poor public trust with concerns?

• 3:01:52Jack Murphy?

  Sounds concerning.

• 3:01:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:01:54Jack Murphy?

  On, on the surface.

• 3:01:55Speaker 03

  That's, that's a good point, though, too. Yeah. Yeah. You would think that people would be more concerned than they actually are that we've got an organization that periodically over the years has gone rogue. Yes.

• 3:02:06Speaker 04

  But, but, so I, I think, I think his, uh, question was the flip side of that.

• 3:02:13Speaker 03

  Or that people believe that stuff.

• 3:02:14Speaker 04

  That, that people believe, will believe anything about the CIA. And look, we all know the CIA has gone off the rails before, but by and large, I feel as though the CIA acts at the behest of the president, right? That it's generally not just some rogue organization out there. So what, i- is it a problem that people have a lot of conspiracy theories about the CIA, too?

• 3:02:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah, I mentioned, I, when, when I got out of prison, I, I was hired by the American Psychological Association to help them write a, a, a new set of rules that would govern APA members', um, participation in national security, uh, custodial interrogations, called the Brookline Protocols. And we were at lunch one day, and it's, it's me and 11 shrinks, right? I was the only one who wasn't a psychologist or psychiatrist. And, um, I said, hey, guys, I have a question for you. I said, not a single day goes by that I don't get at least one email from somebody saying that the CIA is beaming waves at their head,

• 3:03:22Speaker 03

  and it's some kind of directed energy weapon, and they're stealing their thoughts and, you know, whatever. There's a chip in the back of their head.

• 3:03:31Jack Murphy?

  I, I feel like the CIA is trying to steal my penis whenever I go to sleep. Uh, maybe that's paranoia, but I, I.

• 3:03:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. So.

• 3:03:40Speaker 03

  And they, they laughed when I said it. And then one of them said, this is a very common kind of, like, entry-level mental illness.

• 3:03:51Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 3:03:51Speaker 03

  And he said, it's easily explainable. A lot of times when people feel overwhelmed by life, their brains default to the easiest explanation. And the explanation is that there's some kind of malevolent force out there that's doing something to them to ruin their lives. And what

• 3:04:12Speaker 05

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• 3:04:40Speaker 03

  But easier malevolent force could there be than an intelligence service that operates in secret?

• 3:04:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:04:47Speaker 03

  And so it's why the CIA gets blamed for everything that happens.

• 3:04:52Speaker 04

  Right. Right. And, and people see it, and not just Americans, but foreigners, which sometimes is beneficial.

• 3:04:57Jack Murphy?

  People who should know better.

• 3:04:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, but sometimes they see it as like this omnipotent, omnipresent force that always knows everything.

• 3:05:07Speaker 03

  Right. Right.

• 3:05:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:05:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's not.

• 3:05:12Speaker 04

  Right. Um, Taylor, thank you very much. Looking forward to the book dropping. Uh, came in late. What was John's background that led him into the agency? Uh, uh, Taylor, I'm gonna, instead of having him answer this, because we're really over time, I'm gonna have you just go back and watch the very beginning we did go over.

• 3:05:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:30Speaker 04

  And did you ever think about life? Do you ever think about a life if you did not become a whistleblower?

• 3:05:38Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, I'd have tons of money and I'd be retired comfortably right now. Yes. I think about it.

• 3:05:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:05:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:05:46Speaker 04

  So.

• 3:05:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you know what? Though, in an experience like this, you also get to see who in your life you can trust and who you can't. And sometimes

• 3:05:58Speaker 03

  the answer surprises you.

• 3:06:01Speaker 04

  So out of curiosity, if Trump were to pardon you, would you get your retirement in back pay or everything?

• 3:06:12Speaker 03

  Yes, sir. Immediately.

• 3:06:14Speaker 04

  Okay. We know that there are influential people who occasionally watch this show. So we are putting out a call

• 3:06:22Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 3:06:23Speaker 04

  to get this in front of Trump, that the man went on TV to defend himself against accusations. The, the, the, the the whole torture program, it wa, it was already publicly like out there. People knew, had been talked about. You weren't the one who broke this. You weren't working for the agency when this happened. Somebody get this in front of either Biden before he leaves, or President Trump when he comes in. Make this happen, please. That's, that's our ask.

• 3:06:54Speaker 03

  Please. Thank you for that.

• 3:06:56Jack Murphy?

  Uh, John, I got a question. You did try to get a, a pardon, right, during the last Trump administration? I, I, that story is a wild one. I'd love to hear about that, like, real quick, if you can.

• 3:07:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I, I had great support from Tucker Carlson. I went on Tucker's show a dozen times and he, he plastered, it was my picture and Assange's picture, and he says, Trump should pardon Assange and Kiriakou. And, um,

• 3:07:24Speaker 03

  I, man, I came close and Tucker car, Tucker called me one day. It was, it was the last day of the Trump presidency. He called me and he says, are you sitting down? And I said, uh-oh, now what? And Tucker says, he's gonna pardon Lil Wayne. And I said, what? He goes, Lil fucking Wayne. He's gonna pardon Lil Wayne. You gotta come on the show tonight. So I go back on the show and I'm like, Mr. President, please, you know, you gotta pardon me. Well, it turned out, I learned later, also from Tucker, that he intended to pardon me and Assange and Snowden. And that

• 3:08:07Speaker 03

  he had gotten a call, Trump had gotten a call from Mitch McConnell and said, if you pardon Assange or Snowden, Mitch McConnell had never heard of me. If you pardon Trump, I'm sorry, if you pardon Assange or Snowden, you will lose the Republican caucus in the Senate and they cannot protect you from conviction, from the, uh, from the, uh,

• 3:08:28Speaker 03

  impeachment.

• 3:08:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:08:29Speaker 03

  Right. So the whole thing just died.

• 3:08:32Speaker 04

  Well, what's interesting is that, um, what's, and, and probably it was tough because you, you're working for Sputnik. So it played, so it played into the whole Russia, Russia, Russia collusion, you know, bullshit. And hopefully, I mean, Trump, he knows he's gonna get, you know, persecuted regardless. Like, he's, he's already been subject to the lawfare. He'll be subject to the lawfare again. I think that he personally, hopefully this time, doesn't care and just like, you know,

• 3:09:12Speaker 04

  gives you what you deserve.

• 3:09:13Speaker 03

  Yes. Thank you. I hope so. I'm gonna try. With these, with these appointments he's made this past week, I, I feel like, you know, things are looking pretty good. So

• 3:09:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:09:23Speaker 03

  we'll see.

• 3:09:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um.

• 3:09:28Speaker 04

  Uh, proud, uh, proud mask in. Thank you very much. Uh, John, big fan. Thoughts, thoughts on Trump taking office?

• 3:09:37Jack Murphy?

  Big one.

• 3:09:38Speaker 03

  You know, I'm actually far more optimistic now than I was eight years ago. Eight years ago, so much was unknown and he was untested in government. And you know, it was always funny to me that, um, he, he would name all these people like, like, uh, General Mattis, for example, Mad Dog Mattis. He's my favorite general. And then, you know, two years later, he's an idiot. He's retarded. He's this, he's that. Same with, uh, Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State. Ah, he's a moron. When he had been, you know, he's going to be the greatest Secretary of State in history. I feel like Trump really has learned how government works.

• 3:10:15Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 3:10:16Speaker 03

  And, um, and that's why instead of appointments like Rex Tillerson, where everybody's like, who? We're getting lots of governors and members of Congress and serious businessmen like hedge fund, uh, managers, people who actually know what they're doing.

• 3:10:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:10:39Speaker 03

  So we can, you know, you don't have to agree with Donald Trump on all the issues. You can certainly have, have policy differences, but I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic about, about the leadership of this government going into this next term.

• 3:10:55Speaker 04

  Is it, you know, you, you sound as though you grew up, uh, relatively like liberal in your ideas, you know, and, and I, and I just mean liberal. Yeah. And, you know, the, and you know, in the sixties and the seventies, especially in the seventies, liberals were like the anti-system, you know, like fuck the man, you know, um, and whatnot. And conservatives were very much like the, the government, right? Uh, law and, you know, and it feels as though we've done this switch, right? We've, we've had this reversal.

• 3:11:31Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:11:32Speaker 04

  Of.

• 3:11:33Speaker 03

  Oh, I think that, I think that scholars will study the 2016 election for precisely that reason. There's been a watershed change in American politics.

• 3:11:41Speaker 04

  Like, like we've just been gotten out of the 20-year war and for liberals to worship these generals who failed to win this war is

• 3:11:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:11:51Speaker 04

  amazing to me in a lot of ways. Cause 20 years ago, 25 years ago, I would have thought that a general, I would have seen a general say something about, whoa, he's a general. He knows what he's talking about. And now I'm like, hmm, right, Jack? I mean, now it's sort of like, well, he was a general during the GWAT. Well, like, what did he accomplish?

• 3:12:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. I, I.

• 3:12:14Jack Murphy?

  John, I, I, I told you that we would go about two hours and we were at like three, three hours and 15 minutes. I, I appreciate your stamina and your

• 3:12:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Sorry, John. Sorry to keep.

• 3:12:28Jack Murphy?

  Um, you know, final, final thought, if there's anything that I failed to mention, anything we have not asked during this interview that you would like to bring up, go for it.

• 3:12:39Speaker 03

  Oh, thanks. You know, I just want to thank you guys for such a, for such a great and in-depth and well-informed conversation. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

• 3:12:47Speaker 04

  We, we really appreciate your patience, you know, with us. Like I said, you know, we've gone along and most of that is me and my rambling. Um, and, and again, where can people find you one more time?

• 3:12:58Speaker 03

  Oh, at Substack. I'm, I'm, uh, John Kiriakou on Substack, but I'm also on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

• 3:13:06Jack Murphy?

  And we, we will have links down in the description of the podcast that you guys can click on and find John.

• 3:13:13Speaker 03

  Thank you for that.

• 3:13:14Speaker 04

  And please let us know, like, whenever you have new projects starting, we'll, we'll blast it out. Just send us

• 3:13:19Speaker 03

  Oh, I appreciate it.

• 3:13:20Speaker 04

  whatever. Yeah.

• 3:13:21Jack Murphy?

  And, uh, we, we will be back on Tuesday with Gene Yu. Dave, he, he's in studio, right? He will be here, here in New York.

• 3:13:30Speaker 04

  What?

• 3:13:31Jack Murphy?

  We're gonna have Gene here.

• 3:13:32Speaker 04

  Hopefully, hopefully he'll get us pizza.

• 3:13:37Jack Murphy?

  So we'll, we'll, we'll talk to him on Tuesday. John, thank you so much for, for spending your Friday evening with us. I appreciate it, man.

• 3:13:46Speaker 03

  Thank you. Good to see you both.

• 3:13:48Jack Murphy?

  All right. Uh, so we'll see all of you guys on Tuesday.

• 3:13:52Speaker 00

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